Tomorrow I travel to Palm Springs, CA to attend the 5th annual IAITAM conference. (IAITAM is the acronym for International Association of IT Asset Managers). The folks at IAITAM are a good bunch. In my view they’ve assembled a good team of professionals. I’m excited to attend –and speak- at this conference. My topic will cover ‘Smarter Oracle Software Licensing’ and one of my key themes will be to discuss Oracle compliance.
What I like about IAITAM is their focus on the burgeoning field of IT software license management and all that goes with it: software compliance and IT audit. In my seven year’s at Miro, I still find many enterprises across North America that still don’t have their IT software management house in order, so when the software vendor knocks at the door and asserts their right to audit, it’s a mad scramble to gather the information necessary –and worse. Things could get very costly in terms of time, energy and treasure.
I just spoke to a client today in Florida who shared with me that they were involved at this moment with an “external audit”, meaning one of their software vendor’s was auditing them. He went on to say that his company is quite lucky to have him and a few others’ around that have a history with this software vendor, because they know the history and know where to find, say, a specific e-mail from a few years’ back that spelled out such and such. He complained to me how much time and energy this audit was taking up. And finally, he added that all’s is well, that they were indeed in compliance. Still, that underscores how much time and energy an external software audit takes. You had better be ready.