Software Licence Exposures for Cognos And Applix Customers
Do you read the Terms & Conditions when you download software and maintenance from IBM and other software vendors? Don’t assume the terms and conditions on your original software contract are still valid.
The IBM acquisition of Cognos and Applix software in the early 2000’s saw many organisations become IBM Software customers.
Many customers are not aware that every time they download point releases or maintenance, they are automatically accepting IBM’s latest Terms and Conditions that govern your organisation’s use of that software.
IBM regularly exercises its right to carry out a compliance review using one of the large accounting firms to establish your current IBM Software licence usage. This can be a very expensive exercise for a customer who is not prepared for this event. It can result in a bill for 20 to 50 times your original pre IBM licence value, often far more expensive than the worst case of the cryptolocker virus.
Chances are your very first Analytic server was on a real X86 machine and someone in the proceeding decade virtualized it onto one of Intel’s much larger multi core environments. In many cases you have been upgrading ever since and didn’t read the terms and conditions presented on download because there was an original contact and you presumed it was still valid.
Well its time to re-examine that assumption and calculate the effect of having to pay an additional licence fee for all the CPU’s in your enviroment and two years back maintenance if you do not have IBM’s Licence Metric Tool installed. And while you are calculating that amount please look at the real costs of maintaining this “free” tool with its prerequisite BigFix Inventory server, distribution network and two databases.
For many the overhead of ILMT (IBM’s Licence Metric Tool) and the constant need to update software signature banks, PVU tables and navigate networks is overwhelming and involves more hardware than the application it monitors.
Customers are often unware of the risk until IBM assigns one of the accounting firms to audit your software licences. These auditors in essence perform the role of judge and jury and establish a report that can result in billing of 20 to 50 times your original pre IBM licence value.
Should this unthinkable scenario happen to your business or you have legacy code that his been “bluewashed” to IBM licensing metrics please give Fisher Australia a confidential call and ask about our IBM Licence Metric Tool service that could avoid all these issues. We can help you avoid an expensive compliance bill and establish good governance on your software estate for future reviews.
Fisher Australia assist customers with all the steps required to meet your obligation as a user of IBM Software, such as:
We also understand the complexities of IBM’s licence metrics and can advise you on the best course of action to ensure you have proper governance of your software estate and meet your obligations in order to use IBM software products.
For independent advice and a complimentary assessment of your existing software estate please email or call us.
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