ITAM Forum opens: 'People just want to talk to other managers about how to defend against software audits'
- Reference: 1589965209
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/20/itam_forum_launches/
- Source link:
The [1]ITAM Forum aims to encourage more companies to practise effective IT asset management (ITAM) and to bring new people into the industry. It also has a mission to provide a global forum for those managing the assets to share ideas, horror stories experience with vendors and best practice.
Martin Thompson, founder and chairman of the ITAM Forum, told The Register the group was born out of efforts to create [2]the ISO19770 standard for IT asset management.
“One of the reasons people have been interested in ITAM in the past is because they are sick of software audits and want to learn to defend themselves against audits, but there are lots of other reasons to get involved,” Thompson said.
The forum has said its two primary objectives are:
1. To educate and evangelise – to encourage more companies to do ITAM and to attract new professionals into the industry
2. To be a caretaker of the new organisational certification program to allow organisations to demonstrate the quality of their ITAM practices.
More general organisations can save money by having a stronger grip on IT assets, which can help them reduce costs and avoid job losses during the economic difficulty following the COVID-19 outbreak, said Thompson, who also led the [3]Campaign for Clear Licensing .
Security and operational agility were improved with better asset management as it gives organisation accurate information about what they have to secure or re-platform to the cloud, for example.
“Ten years ago, people thought everything would be compliant in the cloud. Although software compliance is less of an issue, costs certainly aren’t planned. It is as complex as ever. Whether it's on the desktop, in the data centre or in the cloud, you’re looking at roughly 35 per cent waste across all of those platforms,” he said.
Another goal of the forum is to give user organisations a stronger voice in public debate over the IT industry by giving the media and researchers access to people who work in business and have direct experience of dealing with software vendors, for example.
It will also help them share experiences with each other. “People just want to talk to other managers about how to defend against software audits, sharing war stories or techniques of certain software publishers. Although there are obviously the constraints of NDAs there are certainly techniques, tips and tricks that people can share,” Thompson said.
Almost as long as there has been software, the industry has been plagued by what some see as sharp practice from vendors. Although its resources are limited, the ITAM Forum could help keep software publishers in check. ®
[1] https://itamf.org/pages/about-1
[2] https://www.iso.org/standard/68531.html
[3] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/10/firms_dont_scrutinise_support_spend_report_warns/
Avoid Oracle and SAP
If you have neither SAP or Oracle then you have very little chance of software audits. (Using Linux and LibreOffice instead of Windows and Microsoft Office would reduce the chance even further.)
"learn to defend themselves against audits"
I'm sorry, where's the problem ? I thought audits were a consensual kind of thing. It's a "I'm here to chek on your licensing landscape", "Please come in" type of thing.
Because if some guy thinks he can barge in and check my kit without my consent, I'll have him know that he needs cops and a warrant to do so.
And if he thinks he can just send me an invoice if I do not comply, well that does not mean I'll pay it.
Re: "learn to defend themselves against audits"
It's not really that simple. You buy a license to use some kind of enterprise software, there is a good chance that you agree to be audited to demonstrate your compliance with that license. If you don't agree to allow that, you aren't in compliance with the license and should stop using it. Fine if it's just me not liking the license clause for Office or something similar, a little harder when you are a large enterprise that depends on a particular piece of software and cannot quickly or easily replace it.
Sure they can't barge their way in, but they can send you a cease and desist letter telling you to either comply or stop using the software. And ultimately they have legal recourse then to get you to prove you have stopped using the software and have removed it from your business.
The bigger issue is that way that many large companies make the licensing deliberately vague so it's hard to know if you are using it in a compliant manner or not. I think that is what this new forum is trying to help with.
The best way to avoid audits
Is of course to replace proprietary software with open-source alternatives wherever possible. Anyone still choosing Oracle for greenfield deployments in 2020 needs to have their head examined (and be fired).