Pirates are mostly guilty of mismanagement

Software, music, movie and games vendors are still losing huge sums of legitimate revenue because organisations and consumers are not paying for all the digital content they use.

In the context of corporate software licensing, compliance and – ­ in its broader sense ­ – software asset management (SAM), the main cause of illegal use is not so much a conscious decision to deliberately pirate software applications as a systematic failure to properly manage software.

It seems that even the threat of clampdowns by vendors and industry watchdogs is doing little to motivate businesses to get their software licensing in order, as many IT managers still do not know what software exists on their network. Perhaps a more effective approach would be to move the argument away from the threat of illegal software use and associated fines and start to focus on the cost-savings that SAM can deliver to organisations.

Failing to have complete visibility of software assets can mean that businesses are over-spending on software. Organisations do not make the most of renewal and maintenance agreements with existing software providers and pay more than they need to. Plus, they are unaware of software that already exists on their network and how it is being used, and as a result purchase unnecessary duplicate or replacement copies.

And finally, employees are allowed to download copies of software to a corporate network unchecked. This not only leads to duplicate copies but also puts companies at risk from a compliance perspective, as users will often agree to personal licence terms, rather than those for a business.

Research last year found that UK organisations were over-spending on purchasing and maintaining software by an average of 20 per cent, while Gartner claims SAM helps organisations save up to 30 per cent of their IT budget.

Maybe the way to get executives serious about managing software investments is not to accuse them of being pirates but money wasters instead.

Matt Fisher is a BCS contributor