Are you prepared for a software license audit?

Are you expecting a software license audit in the coming year? Are you concerned that the number of licenses you have purchased deviates greatly from the number of software applications actually used? If you do not have a good overview of the correlation between purchased and actually used licenses, your organization runs the risk of incurring a substantial fine. Added to which, your software costs may turn out higher than necessary because of some licenses not being used at all.

The latter is a common problem for many companies, and occurs when new employees enter service and the privileges of employees in similar functions are copied to their user accounts. This often includes rights to applications the employee may not actually require. In other cases, temporary access rights to applications that employees require for a particular project are not revoked once the project has been completed. Even worse, accounts by employees who have left the organization are not terminated. As you can see, there are plenty of reasons why the number of licenses actually used might not match the number of purchased licenses.

So how can you solve this problem and manage your license costs more effectively to be better prepared for future software license audits? Tools4ever offers various options:

• Automated user provisioning & role-based access control: Using the HR system as the source system for creating, modifying and removing user accounts and authorizations, employees can be assigned temporary access to the network and the applications they need. In the licensing context, this also ensures that the rights of former employees are revoked in a timely fashion. Combined with Role Based Access Control (RBAC) – a solution that lets you assign rights based on the role or title of employees – rights will only be assigned once a consensus has been reached on the applications that employees actually require for their daily work.

• Real Use Dashboard: Tools4ever provides IT managers, systems administrators and application administrators with a dashboard that lists the number of times an application has been launched by an employee, the number of minutes the application has been used as well as the idle time in minutes. If an application remains unused for a long period, the application can be revoked or the user can be given a warning. The total license costs and the status of used applications can be mapped out using an interface with a facility management system or IT service management system.

• Passive auditing: UMRA offers an option to periodically send managers an overview of the rights and applications to which the manager´s team have access. This reporting can take place, for instance, once a quarter or once a year for the software license audit. Managers can conveniently check whether everything is in order and give their approval. They can also make changes that will be implemented automatically.

To make a long story short, if you are expecting a license cost audit in the near future and want to prevent fines or to cut your license costs, make sure to take the correct precautions. For more information, please visit our website.