Chapter 5. Understanding and Surviving Software License Compliance Audits

Vendor audits are on the rise and the future outlook is that they will continue to increase, especially as vendors realize that the return on investment in a customer compliance program brings back an average of ten dollars for every dollar spent. More focus will be placed on compliance from both the vendor and the end-user perspectives.

We've already seen an increase in government compliance regulation in the form of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), all of which have some level of IT governance written into them.

So, with the increase in compliance activity that is going on in the business world, is there anything that you can do to avoid a license compliance event in the future? Not really, short of not buying software to help run your business, but who can afford to do that? Vendor compliance audits are fast becoming...