In December I wrote about Microsoft and the possibility that proprietary software vendors would seek to audit customers in 2009 to scare up revenue.
Fast forward a few months, and CMS Watch suggests that EMC is attempting to do that:
...[I]n the last couple of quarters we have started to see EMC in particular launch audits, with seemingly no [particular cause]. In what comes off as a coordinated, US-wide effort, many customers are currently being audited or under threat of audit by EMC -- or to be specific: Documentum buyers and EMC's proxy KPMG -- and as you can imagine, customers are not happy.
What we know for sure is that the rush to audit started in the late Q3 to early Q4. We also know that the audits all seem to fit a rough pattern. Two targets:
- Larger enterprise buyers that have not spent much money with the firm in awhile.
- Buyers who may be moving from cpu-based pricing to user-based pricing.
Software piracy is emphatically wrong, but you have to wonder why these big software vendors have to resort to wringing cash from their existing customers rather than selling value to new customers. But maybe I struggle to understand such behavior when open-source software vendors are thriving in the economic downturn.
Software audits are a nasty way to engage with customers. Perhaps those customers would do better to try open-source software next time. A software audit is not inimical to open source, but I've never heard of an open-source vendor conducting one and, given the way open source is sold, it seems highly unlikely that we'll see one anytime soon.
One more reason to buy open source, in case you needed one more.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
CIO.com offers a sobering reminder as to one potential downside to proprietary licensing: when vendors get desperate for revenue, auditing for "piracy" can help them clean up.
Piracy is illegal and wrong. But sometimes piracy is in the eye of the beholder, and it's a safe bet that if the beholder is Microsoft or some other large enterprise software vendor, it's going to win any dispute over illegitimate licenses. Just ask Ernie Ball, who had the unfortunate pleasure of greeting an unannounced, Business Software Alliance-sponsored raid by U.S. marshals on his office a few years back.
From the CIO.com article:
Companies, individuals, and even government bodies are at risk of being audited. On October 27 the Business Software Alliance (BSA) intensified its crusade against piracy and filed suits against nine individuals in the U.S. and U.K. for selling illegal copies of software over the Internet. The BSA also filed suit against Kiryat Yam, a city in Israel, on behalf of Microsoft for purportedly using unlicensed Windows products on their employee computers.
Thinking it won't happen to you is a naive and risky attitude to take. Even if Microsoft or the BSA don't come knocking on your door right away, Global Anti-Piracy Day could indirectly lead to your organization being investigated. Part of the resellers' audits includes them granting Microsoft access to lists of customers who "purchased" software and this could lead auditors directly to enterprise end-users--not a happy thought for most CIOs.
As a CIO you have at least two choices:
- Stringently enforce internal software auditing policies so as to closely monitor every line of code that makes it onto your company's computers;
- Switch to open source which can offer equivalent or better functionality at significantly lower total cost of ownership (not to mention acquisition cost), plus can rid you of the need to count licenses.
Open source is not a panacea to piracy, of course: commercial open-source vendors expect to get paid for supported software that enterprises deploy. (Red Hat's biggest competitor, according to sources within the company? Unpaid use of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux software.)
But open source is a fantastic way to get the BSA off the CIO's back. In this year when proprietary software vendors will likely becoming increasingly desperate for revenue, the friendly face of open source may be a welcome alternative to the threatening mutterings of the BSA.
- prev
- 1
- next
