Software license compliance audit

Struggling with complex software audits and license management? Total Network Inventory makes it easy. Its automated network scanning and centralized authorization simplify compliance tracking across your entire infrastructure.

Schedule recurring audits without installations or agents. Get full change logs and custom reports to optimize license costs. Avoid non-compliance fines and risks with robust controls.

Right now, request a personalized demo to see how Total Network Inventory can solve your solution asset management headaches for good. Contact our team or start a free trial today.

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Best practices to ensure software license compliance

As organizations rely more and more on software to conduct business, properly managing program licenses is crucial for reducing costs and minimizing legal risks. Some best practices for organizations to ensure software license compliance include:

• Centralizing authorization management - Have a centralized database to store all details: audit license keys, agreements, purchase/renewal data, etc. Makes analysis and tracking simpler.
• Automating license audit - Use tools like Total Network Inventory (TNI) to automatically scan networks and collect software inventory data to match with a permit. Eliminates manual auditing.
• Strictly controlling software installation privileges - Set policies to limit who can install software to only IT administrators. Reduces unauthorized installations.
• Investing in auditing tools - Solutions like TNI make performing comprehensive license analysis across large hybrid networks tremendously easier.
• Scheduling regular audits - Do not just audit when true-up bills arrive or renewals come up. Schedule quarterly audits to validate compliance.
• Standardizing program deployments - Reduce license complexity by choosing one or two standard software packages per function across the organization.

Adhering to best practices helps avoid fines, legal issues, excessive IT troubleshooting, and wasted spending from the use of non-compliant software.

What is a software license audit?

A software license audit is a comprehensive review of an organization's software assets to ensure compliance with licensing agreements. The analysis serves to identify all software titles installed and deployed across the organization's entire hybrid IT infrastructure encompassing on-premise servers, desktops, laptops, remote offices, cloud environments, mobile devices, etc.

The goal is to create a complete inventory of all software installations mapped to purchased licenses to detect any under-licensing gaps or over-licensing waste. This provides visibility into what program is truly being utilized versus what authorizations are paid for, the number of installations versus seats purchased, and whether any unauthorized tools exist, and enables organizations to optimize their permit spending.

Why is software licensing auditing necessary?

Regular software licensing audits are necessary for several reasons:

• Ensure legal and financial compliance - analysis validate that the organization is properly licensed with the correct number of paid seats/installations for all software deployed to avoid financial true-up fees and penalties levied by program vendors' audit teams. Non-compliance fines can tally upwards of $ 100K or even millions for large enterprises.
• Optimize license costs - Audits give visibility into unused, over-purchased authorization that can be reclaimed and reallocated to avoid renewing and overspending on unnecessary permits. Savings here can also reach 6-7 figures for bigger firms.
• Manage IT resources effectively - An accurate software inventory enables more predictive capacity planning, timely security updates, and more efficient IT support, upgrades, and security patching across an organization. Rogue, vulnerable tools can present cybersecurity and system stability risks.
• Negotiate better contract terms - Comprehensive audit reports allow organizations to negotiate better rates, terms, and conditions during license renewals or true-ups by providing transparency into actual usage.

Problems of non-compliant software license use

Using non-compliant software licenses illegally or against agreements can lead to several critical issues for organizations:

• Financial penalties and lawsuits - Software vendors may issue financial penalties, litigate, and damage the organization's reputation over unauthorized use of the program. Fines can tally hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
• Business disruption - If unauthorized installations detected during vendor true-up audits exceed purchased licenses significantly, organizations may be forced to uninstall tools critical for operations. Else pay short-term true-up fees at 3-4x times the normal rates.
• Security vulnerabilities - Unsupported, vulnerable software that does not receive timely patches and updates can serve as an easy gateway for cyberattacks and malware.
• System instability - Similarly outdated, insecure software can also impact the stability and performance of systems integrated with business-critical infrastructure.
• Inaccurate IT asset tracking - The inability to accurately track real-time software deployments makes resource planning and IT management inefficient and complicated.
• Overspending on licenses - Poor visibility into actual installation usage causes over-purchasing of unused/scarcely deployed authorization during renewals.

Regular rigorous software analysis are the best way to avoid these pitfalls of non-compliance.

Software license compliance audit with Total Network Inventory

Total Network Inventory (TNI) is an end-to-end automated solution that simplifies tracking, managing, and reporting compliance audit software across complex enterprise IT environments.

TNI leverages non-intrusive scanning to perform comprehensive software license auditing across the breadth of an organization's infrastructure - including on-premise, and remote resources. It automatically collects hardware profiles, and all installed tools titles and matches installations with permit purchases maintained in its centralized storage.

Centralized license management

All audit software licenses, purchase data, invoices, end-user agreements, and related documents are stored in TNI's central database for unified management and tracking. Role-based access control enables authorization administrators to manage system purchases, allocate seats, and track expiry and renewals while users can only view allotted licenses.

Comprehensive network scanning

TNI uses non-intrusive network scans without requiring any agents. Single devices, IP ranges,or full AD domains can be scanned by TNI's automated jobs on custom schedules. No manual collection of software inventories across different sites is needed.

Strict software license control

TNI enables administrators to set policies restricting unauthorized installation privileges to designated technical users only. Combined with automated audits, this ensures continual compliance enforcement across global enterprise networks.

Software audit and reconciliation tools

With core strengths in comprehensive asset inventory tracking and management, TNI provides built-in reconciliation to compare installations against purchases and includes all the software auditing capabilities organizations need including:

Scheduled Audits

Audits can be scheduled to run in the background at desired days/times regularly to maximize efficiency. Audit runs do not impact production environments or end-user workflows.

Detailed Change Tracking

TNI logs all hardware and software changes like new installations, updates, and removals along with granular details like pre-post change detections, user context of changes, etc. Enables audit trail for compliance.

Custom Reports

Highly customizable reports with hundreds of fields can be built leveraging TNI's data, shared across teams, printed, saved, and exported in just a few clicks - meeting diverse compliance reporting needs.

Purchase our software now

We encourage you to take the next step and purchase Total Network Inventory Professional solution to streamline system asset management and license compliance for your organization starting today. Our intuitive GUI allows fast setup and deployment across networks of all sizes without needing extensive training or consultants. Please contact our friendly sales team by phone or email, or simply visit www.softinventive.com to register for a free, fully functional trial of Total Network Inventory. We offer flexible pricing tiers for organizations of all sizes including discounted volume licensing audits.

Our team offers seamless support by providing any help with the program. Additionally, we will help you determine your goals, pick up the right tools, and comply with your business initiatives.