There are two things that enterprise leaders can be certain of today: taxes and unwanted software audit in the near future.
Software is intellectual property and vendors guard their rights to it seriously. Even if you haven't been audited before, or even if you've been audited last year, you must understand that software vendor audits are inevitable and now a part of doing business. So, what do you do when you get that first demand letter?
First, understand that this demand letter was unavoidable.
Unwanted, of course, but a software audit should no longer be unexpected. The number of software vendor audits has been increasing for the last 10 years now as a means of ensuring full compliance with licensing terms, and, of course, full payment for current software usage. Software is a revenue-generating activity for many (though not all) software companies. It is also a means to protect their intellectual property, and vendors...