Last updated: December 1, 2021
Many years ago, when companies took their first steps towards the modern and graphically appealing Windows, there was usually still a truce between the licensing obligation of the programs and the conscience of the IT manager. That was also the time when Word or even Excel were among the most valuable treasures of the IT department.
At least in my old company, Word was only available to the authorized signatory and his secretary, Excel was not used at all, and PowerPoint was also only available in isolated cases and was used so rarely that the people in charge probably thought that licensing would not pay off. On the other hand, there were still very expensive programs that could only be made to do what they were supposed to do, namely start without a hitch, with a hardware dongle. Sporadically there is such a thing surely also still today.
Today it is shot sharp
Today the thing with the licensing looks completely different. Dongles or cryptic number and letter combinations, which one had to enter for the installation, belong for the most part already to the past. And in contrast to the public TV stations, the variety of programs has changed quite a bit.
We are bombarded with an almost inflationary number of Office products and other programs. It’s hardly a question anymore whether a user gets Word or Excel installed. An Office package with up to more than 30 programs and tools is always included in many cloud licenses.
Too much of a good thing?
While in the past it was mostly manageable licensing models, today over-licensing can also happily occur. So more rights to use programs than we might have users.
But also the classic old-fashioned reason of having too few licenses can still occur. This often happens with volume licensing, where you still don’t buy an exact number of licenses, but license by “from – to”. Virus scanners as enterprise volume licenses immediately come to mind.
Be that as it may, from the company’s point of view, neither under-licensing nor over-licensing is desirable. If you over-license, you quickly realize that you are paying too much; if you under-license, you quickly turn off the legal path, and from then on you are dependent on the goodwill of the manufacturers as to how they deal with it. At best, you’ll just be asked to repurchase the licenses when it becomes known.
The duty to provide information
And in the event of a license audit at the latest, the person responsible is then not only in the manufacturer’s line of fire, but may also have to deal with the management and explain why too many licenses are being paid for and why no one sees this. Either way, meticulous monitoring and listing of licenses in use is one of the most basic tasks of IT managers.
No fear of license audits – thanks to Docusnap
Docusnap offers a simple solution to this problem with its integrated license management. Since Docusnap allows licenses to be assigned to individual systems, evaluations of the corresponding licensing of these systems are no problem and a clear report is quickly created. And if management does not require a complete list of all licenses in use, licenses can of course also be grouped by manufacturer. A Microsoft license audit, for example, quickly loses its horror because all licenses are immediately available and can be displayed graphically.
But even without your own license audit, it has its advantages if you can quickly make over- or under-licensing visible in Docusnap.
We show how easily this works in Docusnap in our short video.
Curious about Docusnap now? Try Docusnap without obligation for 30 days. And because we want you to experience the full potential of the software, we offer our full professional support even during the free trial period.