41% of UK businesses could be wasting thousand of pounds on overlicensing their software.

A further 11% do not know whether they are over or underlicensed.

The FAST Standard for Software Compliance FSSC-1:2007 is a private standard developed in collaboration with the British Standards Institution (BSI). It is a tried and tested formula that helps organisations properly manage and control their IT assets.

Audit tools are a long-term business investment, so it makes sense to carefully evaluate all the available alternatives against your organisation’s initial and ongoing needs. However, if you’re a busy IT manager, trawling multiple websites in an attempt to collate essential data is probably the last thing you’ll want to do!

To help you make the right decisions faster, FAST’s online Audit Tool Evaluation has been designed to provide valuable information about the market’s leading software management and inventory products.

The Verb Group achieved registration to the FAST Standard for Software Compliance FSSC-1:2007 in just 8 months, resulting in many benefits. They now have an accurate IT asset register, have lowered software licensing costs and improved processes have reduced help desk calls by 25%.

As part of Berwin Leighton Paisner's ongoing drive to improve efficiency, its IT department made the decision to take a closer look at its assets and in particular to ensure its software licences were in order.

SOFTWARE LICENSING

Q. If we have bought a competitive upgrade, do we have to be able to provide the licence from the previous publisher?
A. Normally this will be requested at the time of the upgrade. As a rule of thumb, if you have ever taken advantage of cheaper upgrades,  rather than full product, the original full product licence must be retained along with all relevant upgrade licences.

E-MAIL & INTERNET

Q. If we block access to certain websites, doesn't that mean that you are allowing access to undesirable sites that haven't been blocked and therefore are liable? 
A. At least you are blocking access to some sites. This hasn't really been tested in law yet so it is a grey area, but it is better to block what you can and combine this with your policies which should state that you do not condone access to any undesirable sites.