What to Know About Microsoft Software License Audits
Make it easier to ensure you’re always prepared for a potential Microsoft audit
What is a Microsoft audit?
As an IT manager, you can be subject, at any time, to a Microsoft audit request. The Microsoft EULA (End User License Agreement) you agree to every time you install Microsoft software means you accept the terms of its use and allow Microsoft to audit the use of any Microsoft software licenses installed on your network.
The Microsoft audit team periodically focuses on auditing particular industries and regions by running widespread audit requests. They’re looking to match what licenses a company has paid for to what they’re using. Of course, you don’t want to be the IT manager caught with unpaid licenses.
By using a tool to automatically update your software inventory and manage software licenses, you can help reduce the risk of paying for unused software licenses and better prepare for a potential Microsoft license audit. When you implement SolarWinds® Service Desk, you can automatically record and manage your entire PC inventory, including your Microsoft services. Service Desk is built to help you more easily manage your IT environment by bringing hardware, software, vendor data, purchase orders, and warranties to a single location.
How does Microsoft conduct a license audit?
If Microsoft suspects a company of using unlicensed software, it sends a series of letters to the organization that can eventually culminate in a letter threatening legal action from the Business Software Alliance (BSA). If you don’t comply, the next steps can involve legal action. If you do comply and aren’t license compliant, you may end up owing a good deal of money to Microsoft. Even if you’re a small organization and believe you fall under Microsoft’s radar, be cautious. All it takes is one complaint, and you could have the Microsoft audit team knocking on your door tomorrow.
Service Desk can help you ensure you’re only paying for the licenses you need and is designed to provide comprehensive tracking to help you more easily identify when you may be improperly using licenses. In addition, the integrated Configuration Management Database (CMDB) software is built to help you demonstrate compliance by automatically tracking configuration items and mapping relationships between infrastructure components.
What happens if you’re caught abusing license compliance?
First, try not to get caught—by being compliant in the first place. Your software license abuse may not be intentional. However, managing software licenses in any organization can be challenging. Even if you’re using properly licensed software, if you cannot show the audit trail, you could still face a fine on top of human resources being overwhelmed with manually putting all the license records in order.
Anything less than total compliance places your business at risk, and perhaps a much higher risk than you realize, which is why large companies and organizations establish license compliance policies. Due to this, many license enforcement organizations are moving their focus to smaller organizations that may be more likely to have less prudent policies for PC software inventory management.
To prepare for an audit and proactively identify potential software license violations, you can benefit from having detailed historical documentation to help demonstrate compliance with your Microsoft software licenses. That’s why Service Desk offers built-in and customizable reports, so you can more easily provide records of your assets and their usage. You can also schedule reports to automatically send updates to internal or external stakeholders to help build transparency across your organization and more easily detect problem areas before an official audit.
How Service Desk can help
You should always be prepared for an IT audit request. By being prepared for any kind of software auditing request, you’ll have exactly what you need if Microsoft wants to audit your Windows inventory.
When you implement an IT asset management tool like SolarWinds Service Desk, you can record and manage your entire PC software inventory easily. And, since SolarWinds Service Desk is a cloud-first SaaS solution, you won’t be adding another software license to manage in your inventory. Start your auditing and discovery the on-demand way.
Help prepare for Microsoft software license audits
Service Desk
Prepare for audits with detailed software asset inventory tools.
Stay on top of accidental non-compliance by keeping records of license renewal dates.
Avoid paying for unneeded licenses by automating IT asset management.
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