We’re not often asked about Named Users, but questions should arise. The most commonly misunderstand situation in software enterprise compliance is the need for licensing to cover non-production environments (e.g. development, test, archive, etc.). This is one of the most common areas of having either over licensed -which means corporate IT is overspending- or have under licensed -which means the company is out of license compliance. When licensing by Oracle’s Named User Plus metric there are several things to consider including (though, this is by no means a comprehensive list):
· What is your actual usage of each program?
· Where each program is installed or enabled?
· What are the various rules surrounding these licenses?
With respect to being out of license compliance, it’s important to realize that SOX regulations hold your most senior executives responsible for license compliance. That’s true, as SOX is not just about reporting financials correctly, it’s also about attesting that your enterprise is in compliance with copyright, trademark and otherwise intellectual property rights.