The $ 1 million rewards incentive program for reporting software piracy has been extended by Business Software Alliance (BSA) because of the increase in reports of piracy. Organizations are prone to unintentional piracy when software is not managed properly. The only alternative to poor audit results is to utilize software asset management automation and to expect proactive and cost effective software management from that investment.
Ottsville, PA (PRWEB) October 19, 2007 — The $ 1 million rewards incentive program for reporting software piracy has produced results, encouraging the Business Software Alliance (BSA) to extend the program beyond the anticipated September, 2007 end. As part of the October celebration of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, the BSA announced an increase in reported software piracy and has extended the reward program through the end of the calendar year. Eracent, a global provider of IT asset management solutions celebrates Cyber Security Awareness by highlighting the importance of software asset management as the only strategy to eliminate unintentional software piracy.
"Mismanagement of software so that more copies are in use than the company has the rights to use is piracy," stated Walt Szablowski, President of Eracent. "Ignorance is not a defense, especially since someone knew enough about the situation to place a call to the rewards program."
Despite the complexities of networks and the changing demands of the users, software asset management business practices help organizations keep usage in line with licensing. These practices not only maintain compliance but yield savings as unused software and unnecessary maintenance are eliminated from the organization's portfolio. Automation has a vital role in software asset management, discovering the licenses in use and reconciling the usage to procurement records to confirm legal usage.
"I strongly encourage large organizations to re-examine their software asset management automation and if you find spreadsheets, manual data collection and reactive management, the company needs to move onto newer technology," stated Szablowski. "Solutions like Eracent's suite take automation beyond current expectations, discovering more in an easily usable manner, automating reconciliation with procurement directly and building a repository of accurate data to support service management. There is no reason to have a bad result from an audit any more."