Planning and Design, a Victorian based architectural drafting firm, has agreed to pay BSA | The Software Alliance $118,000 in a settlement case after it emerged that the company had been using unlicensed software since 2009.
The software included Adobe Photoshop, Acrobat and Autodesk AutoCAD.
“This case highlights the financial risk businesses take by using unlicensed software. It’s also important to recognise the IT security risks these businesses are also taking, such as security threats from malware, leaving systems and data open to threat, which can impair productivity and cause loss of work,” BSA Australia chair Clayton Noble said in a statement.
He reminded businesses to undertake checks of their software licenses and implement a Software Asset Management (SAM) practice.
In September 2014, the BSA settled a case out of court with a Perth engineering firm that had been using unlicensed versions of Autodesk since March 2012.
The business, which could not be named, paid $65,000 in damages and purchased software licences for its future software deployments.
In response, Software Optimisation Services CEO Filipa Preston said that the IT industry makes the mistake of focusing on the compliance capabilities of SAM over its ability to save firms money on their software.
“This approach is hurting firms because compliance is often not a compelling enough reason to get people excited enough to invest in SAM,” she said in a statement.
“SAM projects are saving firms money every single day, yet the industry often fails to shout about this. As a result SAM is suffering from a case of mistaken identity – being seen as a compliance tool first, and a cost reducer second. It is the other way around; SAM is a proactive management tool for saving money on software first, and a compliance tool second.”
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