Varicent Customers Should Plan for Audits by IBM

Christopher Barnett  Comments (0)
In April 2012, IBM announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Varicent Software, Inc., an Ontario-based publisher of analytics software for compensation and sales performance management. According to the announcement, Varicent’s customers include Starwood Hotels......

IBM Software Audit Step Number 1: Read the Contract

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When first contacted by IBM for a "compliance review" (read: software audit), many business owners simply assume that the scope of the requested audit is within IBM’s rights under applicable licensing agreements. Alternatively, if they do request that IBM identify the basi......

IBM Software Audits Involve Complex Licensing Rules

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Business owners and managers whose companies have been targeted by IBM for a compliance audit often express surprise at the complex method IBM uses to determine the licensing requirements for many of its server software products, such as WebSphere and Tivoli. Many software v......

Adobe Creative Suite Abandons Your Desktop for The Cloud

Christopher Barnett  Comments (0)
On May 6, 2013, Adobe announced that Creative Suite 6 and the component products included in that product line (e.g., Photoshop CS6, Illustrator CS6, etc.) would be the last Creative Suite products to be released under stand-alone, end-user licenses. Citing strong user enthu......

Autodesk License Alert

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One venerable software license model that many companies have utilized in the past has been the license upgrade, under which a licensee could acquire the right to deploy the newest version of a product at a much-reduced price, provided that the licensee also owns a full lice......

Beware IBM Acquisitions and Product Transitions

Christopher Barnett  Comments (0)
IBM software licensing can be a very complex knot to untie. While IBM does develop new products in house, many of its most popular offerings (Cognos, Tivoli and ILOG, to name a few) are the result of its active history of acquiring smaller publishers and then continuing to o......

ISVs Must Attend to Customer Agreements

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Independent software vendors and other companies that distribute third-party software products as part of their proprietary solutions often are predictably good at capturing core business terms in their customer agreements, carefully defining the products and scope of servic......

A Global Definition for Software “Hosting”

Christopher Barnett  Comments (0)
I previously have discussed what "commercial hosting" means when it comes to Microsoft software, but the universe of problems created by the "hosting" ambiguity obviously is bigger than just Microsoft. Almost all software publishers restrict or prohibit - to varying degrees......

Big Changes for Microsoft System Center Licensing

Christopher Barnett  Comments (0)
Business software buyers increasingly are aware of the significant changes that Microsoft will be implementing to the license metrics for SQL Server when version 2012 of the popular database solution is released this April. However, of potentially equal or even greater signi......