A common misconception about IT Asset Management is that one person can magically do it all. There are skills and talents that are best done by experts in other departments unless your company is of the size to create the ideal of a department devoted to this service under one umbrella, with dotted lines and coordination with a few other departments such as IT technical staff, legal. When considering the hire of an IT Asset leader, let him/her tell you what is needed, rather than guess or follow misguided information from those who have never created and managed an ITAM program in a real life situation. Flexibility is important.

Follow the current life cycle path of hardware and software within your organization. Typically it begins with the idea and research of what is needed or wanted, then moves to purchasing, receiving, installation, care while in residence, retirement. There are some important steps missing in this scenario that can be filled under the skilled guidance of an IT Asset Manager. The key word here is guidance.

Lance Ulanoff's "What's New Now" cited a very interesting article by Eric Griffith in PC Magazine titled The Best Free Software. Eric compiled a Hall of Fame list of suitable software that won't send your budget into another galaxy. Layoff non-essential and over priced software, not people.

157 software tools. No fees. No expiration dates. No problems. Sometimes even no downloads. No kidding.

It's true, there are many good software products out there that don't cost thousands of dollars, and are even free. I agree with Eric, why spend those big bucks when you don't have to? I'm sure your IT staff knows about these gems and can test them to add to your technology savings initiative. You do have a technology savings initiative, don't you? It can start with software purchases, or non-purchases.

Yes, there's a term to cover software and hardware and peripherals, and gadgets and doodads; it's Technology Assets. It includes printers, PDAs, anything with a memory that your company owns. Starting with Software Asset Management, this field has expanded to include anything "technical" and the processes involved in their residency in your company.

A call from a large international consulting firm came through today, looking for consultants for Technical Asset Management. There's more going on in this field than we generally hear about. There is a need for Technical Asset Managers.

Many courses have come into being since the early 1990s when the Software Publishers Association first offered its Certified Software Managers (CSM) course. One had to travel and stay in hotels unless the course came within your commutable range. This course was sponsored by a software enforcement agency. Other courses came into being, sponsored by software publishers and the growing number of enforcement industry members. None of them were vendor neutral. One organization developed vendor neutral courses for a time but seems to have lost its independence.

The source for vendor neutral, cost effective, no-travel excellent courses is the Business Technology Consumer Network, Inc.. The Network, for short, is genuinely "all about helping you".

The reward for reporting software piracy to the BSA is "up to $1 Million". How much does the person reporting the piracy receive? Not the full amount. Not much at all. Is the person reporting a company for piracy really protected by whistle blower law? Not always. One employee was fired for reporting a security breach.

The BSA is only one of the 26 enforcement agencies in the United States. There are over 100 in the world. 2008 is off to a good start. It's only February and the BSA has announced collecting the following settlements: $72,053, $80,000, $92,500, $175,000, $135,750, $112,000. Remember, the actual costs involved in a settlement run three to six times the settlement figures shown.

Do software companies have the right to bring charges of copyright infringement against people and companies when they themselves have copied other people's and company's software code? Is it right for them to say that others cannot reverse engineer their software when reverse engineering is an industry standard? Or is it because they don't want anyone to see what they have pirated?

The Great Software Fraud drills down to the lowest level code to prove the point that Software companies have been lying to us for years, claiming their software is new, original, proprietary, and exclusive to them.

How software patents came to be is also interesting since patents are for tangible things like printers, CPUs, monitors and other hardware.

This is a fascinating read. I had to copy and paste the link into Outlook instead of Firefox to be able to order this book.

Keep your music volume down in public or you may be accused of rebroadcasting music and therefore subject to paying royalties. According to the Performing Rights Society (PRS), if others can hear the music you are playing on your radio, and God knows what else, it constitutes copyright infringement. How bizarre is that?

Copyright Enforcement Goes Looney-Tech! is certainly an understatement. The PRS must be on something to come up with this absurdity. Wouldn't it be nice to get paid to hallucinate? Or, perhaps we could fine ease droppers to recoup the fine for playing music that others heard.

Will the PRS start offering whistle blower rewards to those who report people for playing music loud enough for them to hear?

How about those boom-box cars playing music at earth shaking volumes? Would this give police enforcement the authority to hand out tickets for "moving copyright infringement"?

Will people put up with this? I think not. Then where will their industry be?

Now here's a standard that should have been in place decades ago. An international standard for software tagging and identification.

Even the best of discovery tools can't identify software if it doesn't want to be identified. How many companies have been fined because of this? How many hours have gone into trying to identify miss-tagged or non-tagged software?

ISO/IEC 19770-2 is still in draft form. It will be a great help to SAMs if it gets off the ground, and if software companies follow it. There is a timetable for its development. It will be a while, and very welcome when it arrives if software companies will follow it.

The ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) have developed international Software Asset Management (SAM) standards for meeting corporate governance requirements and reaping benefits as outlined in the Introduction. ISO/IEC 19770-1:2006 Part 1 is said to describe the processes. The book, ISO/IEC 19007-1:2006, Information technology – Software asset management – Part 1: processes is available on Amazon for $72.15.

I don't find this to be a startling revelation. The areas covered, such as media, licenses, installations, proof of purchase, etc., are already standards for knowledgeable SAMs and ITAMs. If a company can become "certified", is this just a way of forcing them to have a SAM program?

English changes, and it's difficult to keep up with acceptable changes. What we learned in school isn't always in common use today, although still correct. It’s important to sharpen your grammar for writings you must do in a Software and IT Asset Management position.

Migon Fogarty, the Grammar Girl, explains the traditional use of words and common current usages. She appeared on the Oprah Show on Monday, March 26, 2007 to settle a confusing possessive debate. Mignon clearly explained the "compound possession" I won’t soon forget. Her new book, titled Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing, is available at Amazon.com and BarnsandNoble.com

Do visit the Grammar Girl site.

It used to be that if you paid for a license to use a software program you were considered “software legal”. Now, however, not only must you pay for, and prove that you paid for the application, it must be used according to the agreement. Do you read license agreements?

How important is it to read all license agreements to all copyrighted products? VERY! Reading the agreements and following what is being agreed to is key or you will be feeding the software industry kitty over and over again. And, it has become difficult to know what is being agreed to as agreements become purposely more complex.

Unfortunately, "...the great majority of businesses out here in the "real world" still haven't recognized the massive threat represented by the software piracy and copyright enforcement industry players." --Alan Plastow

Of particular interest on the updated Business Technology Consumer Network (BTCN) website is a video presentation that all your management must watch. This compelling, eye-opening video gives you the flavor of the only online course on software pirate audit offense that also leads to 25% software savings. There are facts and figures you won't forget. Take a few moments to watch Software Piracy Prevention Training Overviews. Share it with your management. It doesn't get more convenient, cost effective and time efficient than this!

The BTCN also offers some nice Project Management courses. Take a look!

Microsoft, taking it on themselves to secretly update your system(s) with "God knows what" is a breach of trust, respect and invasion of your right to operate computers as you want. Often systems are kicked out of whack, applications start acting strangely and well planned out uniform desktop configurations are disrupted by this malware, making desktop maintenance more difficult and time consuming.

Besides updates, what else is being installed on your computers without permission or our knowledge? Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols laid it on the line with Microsoft in his September 13, 2007 eWEEK article,
What the Hell Is Microsoft Doing with My Computer? "Get out of my machine and stay out."

Quotes are from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols's article.