Category: Microsoft Licensing Compliance

The BSA’s “nauseating” anti-piracy tactics

We have often addressed the BSA and their piracy fighting tactics here on this blog as a warning sign for those who aren’t taking compliance as seriously as they should be. PC Pro Magazine recently wrote a story about a small business that was targeted by the BSA and the exact tactics that were used to strong arm them into an audit.

Microsoft Enterprise Agreement: Watch That True-up

If you have 250 computers in your organization, you probably have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA). A perpetual license, the EA is designed to standardize the Microsoft products enterprise-wide, while providing the most current version. Microsoft and its resellers love EAs because it brings recurring revenue with its three-year agreement and maintenance fees. Under an EA, the organization has a standard yearly “True-up”, where full payment is required for any new usage on products included in the EA for the […]

Using Oracle Database Firewall

We’re all familiar with network firewalls, which prevent unauthorized access to your network from external sources. However, network firewalls don’t protect your databases from malicious attacks, which sometimes come disguised as privileged internal users. Web applications are a major source of data attacks, through stratagems such as SQL Injection, for example. Oracle’s Database Firewall (a product Oracle gained through its acquisition of Secerno, a British firm, in 2010) offers a solid defensive perimeter to monitor and enforce accepted behavior on […]

Microsoft addresses licensing complexity

This week, while at SoftSummit in San Jose, Microsoft is stressing that they aren’t trying to make their licensing complex, but they do admit that there are complexities that must be addressed – for example – with cloud and virtualization.

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