Depending on the structure of your company and additionally the composition of your network, there can be different approaches to your strategy. There are so many different products, license models and countless software producers. The license models tend to be balanced in a way in order to provide a maximum flexibility to the customers. At the same time profit-oriented software houses are highly motivated to generate as much as profit as they can without losing their customers. Usually this creates acceptable compromises, because even monopolists cannot afford spoiling the masses in times of social media. However, certain entanglements with old license models, relicensing and additional license purchases create completely unclear conditions. Companies don’t have a chance to optimize their license costs and simultaneously stay legal without professional license support through license experts. And even then, the experts usually only focus to a small number of products that are used in the companies.
It is not recommended to completely rely on external consultants in connection to such an important subject – especially then if the external consultant is the friendly hardware shop next door, who doesn’t really know what he is selling you without the slightest idea of how license models of the vendors (Microsoft, Adobe, HP, McAfee and some others) work these days.
It is always the company itself who is liable for its actions, because external consultants use to exclude miscounseling in their service agreements. There are a few Lan-Inspector customers who made the unpleasant and expensive experience of being forced to completely re-license large areas of the network; just because the licenses they bought before are not allowed to be used in the planned way.
Especially striving for innovation and following new trends creates license problems within companies. Cloud service providers want to distribute their solutions usually caring much about existing software and hardware infrastructure in companies. They propagate new models and sell them without mercy (“Well, I’m sure it will fit in your license models”).
If everything is done correctly, license management can spare costs and provide legal safety. You need a proper strategy for your license management that fits to the individual quirks of your productive IT landscape. But, if every network is so individual and heterogeneous … how can it be possible to find the proper strategy for it?