Finally!!! The nightmare is over!!!

[Budster64]

After aloooong year my software licensing nightmare is over!!!!

The previous MIS Manager at a certain company I work for happened to upgrade 98% of the comps in the company with a certain version of a "popular" office suite without actually verifying that we were properly licensed. When I took over, and after a bit of researching I discovered this had been done and confronted him. His response was that we HAD licenses but when I asked him to prove it he couldn't...he said we could check the web database to verify this...I tried, there was no mention of any licenses held for this version. I called the software company, they refered me back to the reseller...the reseller gave me this song and dance about how we were licensed, but when asked to show proof...NOTHING. At that point I got the reqs together to get us into compliance, of course that went through the usual Corp BS and got stalled and stalled and stalled. At one point I even told the bosses that if we didn't do something soon I would rollback all the desktops to a previous licensed version, but the argument was that they had already been using for quite a while and had so many documents created in the present version that it would take lots of manhours to save everything to a previous version.
In the meantime I kept proof of who was responsible for this, Hey I wanted to make sure that IF there ever was an audit I wasn't going to be the one taking the blame for all this. But who wants to go through all that crap anyways?? And I always had the feeling that no matter what proof I had it was still going to be MY head on the chopping block, wether that was the case or not, it was still on the back of my mind.
Needless to say it was a loooonggg year, with the beancounters...ahem...accountants griping about the cost and me and my boss( she also was not in charge when this all came about originally)arguing that the price of the software was cheap as compared to the fines ( this would have been a second offense for this co.) that would be levied and we'd STILL have to pay for the software if we were ever audited.
WHEW...
In any case, IT'S OVER!!!
I got the reqs signed and approved and the order was put in so it's a done deal!!!!
One less thing I have to worry about!!!

Honestly, talk about pennywise and pound foolish!

One great thing that came out of all this, previously the leaders in this company cared squat about this kind of thing, but at the insistance of myself and my boss the prez has now taken a heavy handed approach to people installing unlicensed software on company machines and we revised the IT Manual to include termination as a possible consequence to anyone breaking the rules. I would hate to have ANYONE fired but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Hey, I don't care what you do with your own machines...you get busted that's YOUR business. But a work comp is NOT your personal, do whatever you want with it toy. ( especially if I have to be the one to fix your desktop cause you decided to install something that wasn't approved and it crashed it beyond repair). somtimes I wish I could charge back my time to employees who see fit to break our policies and then crash the system because of it. Maybe after a few deductions from their paychecks they'd get the picture.

[±Octavian]

The pain that you went thourgh we are going through that now. And if we tried to listen to the people at our coporate office we wo8uld be rediculously underlicensed. Usually we are the ones that have to prove them wrong. Anyway I am estimating to be were you are in about a year. Caught in a spending freeze right now.

From what I have done with licensing that is one hell of an acoumplishment.


Lter

[MacGyver]

My company is undergoing an audit right now. We probably hold more AutoCAD licenses than any other company in Canada, so they like to watch us like a hawk. We used to be terrible for software licensing (I think only about 30% of our software was licensed two years ago). Now we keep accurate records and nobody installs anything without the net admins knowing about it. It cost us a lot to get legal, but I am ever glad that we are. We just show our records to the auditors and tell them to take a hike.