January, 2008 | Miro Consulting

Piracy Police could come knocking at your door!

January 30, 2008February 4, 2008 Scott D. RosenbergUncategorizedLeave a Comment

Baseline Magazine recently published an informative article about what steps to take should you get an audit letter from the BSA. The process, as scary as it is, should be handled with care in order to come out with the smallest settlement possible, and avoid litigation if at all possible. What exactly is the BSA and what do they want with us? “The Business Software Alliance (www.bsa.org) is the foremost organization dedicated to promoting a safe and legal digital world. […]

Miro in the News: Microsoft Tests Partners’ Licensing Knowledge

January 28, 2008February 4, 2008 Scott D. RosenbergUncategorizedLeave a Comment

So the latest buzz is about Microsoft’s licensing quiz for its channel partners. What a clever way to drive licensing sales and assert their software compliance rights. In fact, that’s exactly what I told Kevin McLaughlin, our reporter friend at CMP in his January 28 article “Microsoft Tests Partners’ Licensing Knowledge.” Software licensing is a complex enough issue. The quiz serves as a tool to help channel partners uncover how much they don’t know about licensing and gets the point […]

Open Source: An Open Sore?

January 25, 2008January 28, 2008 Scott D. RosenbergUncategorizedLeave a Comment

Open Source has been an open sore when it comes to software licensing. Forget about the well-established software procurement process the IT department has worked so hard on. Instead, people are just downloading free and available open source codes off the web. The result is that IT managers don’t know about these downloads and what software license is covered or not covered. So, Hewlett-Packard launched an enterprise software licensing tool for implementing open source governance and consulting services. They are […]

Who would have thought about the fonts?

January 23, 2008 Scott D. RosenbergUncategorizedLeave a Comment

Here is the scenario – you buy new computers for the office that all come with an upgraded version of the latest operating system. On top of all that comes with the new operating system – training, compatibility issues with old computers, etc – did you ever think you would have to consider fonts??? Well, what many IT managers don’t realize, or don’t have the bandwidth to consider, is that all fonts are licensed and need to be kept up […]

Term vs. Perpetual Licensing—When Does Choosing a Term License Make More Sense Than a Perpetual License?

January 22, 2008October 28, 2022 Scott D. RosenbergUncategorizedLeave a Comment

Update: As of September 1, 2020, Oracle discontinued the option of purchasing on-premise term licenses (1-5 years), with the exception of some key technology products which may still be purchased on 1-year term licensing. If you’re anticipating the need for additional Oracle licensing and your budget is small, you may be better off with a term license. Depending on the business need – it may work out to your business’ benefit. What exactly is a term license? Oracle, for example, […]

BEA, Oracle, MySQL, Sun Microsystems….oh, my!

January 17, 2008January 28, 2008 Scott D. RosenbergUncategorizedLeave a Comment

So, two big news items happened this week. Oracle is buying BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems will buy MySQL. So, Larry Ellison gets his wish (Was there any doubt?). The good news is that BEA makes some mean middleware that will only strengthen Oracle’s offerings. And, yowza! The free, open source database used by Facebook, Google dozens of companies (including some Fortune 1000 and Global 100 companies IS being bought by Sun. It’s only January. Can’t wait to see […]

Named User Plus Licensing

January 16, 2008January 17, 2008 Scott D. RosenbergUncategorizedLeave a Comment

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 […]

When BSA comes a-calling…..you better answer the door.

January 14, 2008 Scott D. RosenbergUncategorizedLeave a Comment

So, the BSA (that would be the Business Software Alliance and not the Boy Scouts of America) is coming down strong on software licensing and setting an example with six companies, who agreed to pay nearly three-quarters of a million dollars for unlicensed software. Software from Adobe Systems, Microsoft Corp. and Symantec were being used without proper licensing. All the companies are required to settle claims monetarily, execute software licensing management best practices and adhere to their software licensing agreements […]

Month: January 2008