It usually involves taking a comprehensive check on the software installed on the network and to compare it with what one is legally entitled to be using. One of the ways a business could do this is by keeping all the related purchase documentation in one place to check it and ensure if the software is licensed or not. Understand the terms of the license to get a better idea of it.

Software Compliance Via Software Asset Management (SAM)

Software asset management is a business practice that involves managing and optimizing the purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal of software applications within an organization. A software asset management review is, in essence, an audit to make sure your company’s Microsoft software licences adequately cover the software you use in your business. Sometimes, businesses will increase the number of employees using their software or change how they use it without updating their software licences.

Software asset management is crucial to the success of any IT organization. When a company has a comprehensive and efficient license management program in place, it reduces costs and ensures that the organization remains in compliance. Managing your software assets impacts your bottom line.

How to Prepare for a Software Compliance Audit:

• Create A product usage and deployment strategy
• Make a list of license types and entitlement
• Create a server and workstation hardware inventory
• Review your virtualization footprint
• Review hosted or shared environment detail
• Account for all software deployment versions, location, and counts
• Assess trends and changes in strategy and deployment
• Log all user types, locations, and counts
• Organize and have on hand all vendor license(s) and purchase agreement terms

Before using or buying software, it is important to understand the laws around it. A software licence is a legal requirement for any consumer wishing to use computer software, and failure in having one is a breach of copyright law and can land you or your business in danger of being prosecuted or fined.

Therefore, all software should be legally licensed before it is used.

Software licenses can be overwhelming and confusing to decipher, but it is important that you read them to uncover the exact terms of the license as well as its restrictions.

Most software licenses are single-user only, so if it is detected that more than one person is using the same software, your software license can be revoked, and your account could be deactivated.

Therefore, if you’re wanting to purchase Microsoft Office software, for example, is it important that you do so from a credible and reliable source, to save you from encountering these problems.

2. The Right Software Licensing for Businesses Can Save You Money

When you buy software it usually comes with a single-user license.

While it is important to note that a single-user license can sometimes be used across multiple devices that are owned and used by one individual (refer to the specific terms and conditions to be sure of this), it is not allowed, lawfully, to be redistributed or used by multiple people.

Therefore, if multiple people need to be using the software, you might consider purchasing multiple software packages, each with its own single-user license, but this can work out as expensive. So, by researching and finding software packages that are suitable for multi-users, depending on how many users you wish to grant access to the software, you can save money overall.

Large businesses or schools will be better off looking into volume licensing – a program for when organizations need multiple product licenses but not necessarily multiple copies of the software, and these are usually discounted at a reasonable price.

The same goes for students at universities and colleges, as a single-user licenses cannot be used across a whole course or year group, for example, but would require a volume licensing program.

3. Receive Around-The-Clock License Support

Microsoft Office licensed software comes with 24/7 tech support, so whatever your query regarding your software or license, you can access help quickly.

You can even have your software installed for you by a specialist, completely hassle-free, if you’re unsure about how to do it yourself.

Licensing support for Microsoft Office doesn’t stop at Windows. Even if you are an Apple user you shouldn’t rule out the importance of getting acquainted with software licensing.

For example, it isn’t uncommon that Mac users are unsatisfied with the alternative apps provided by Apple that replicate Microsoft Office programs, but sometimes Microsoft software is not designed to be compatible with Apple like it is compatible with Windows.