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Virtualization of mid-range servers in the data center is probably the biggest IT industry trend in the past few years. Virtualization allows businesses to run with fewer physical servers (cutting hardware and power costs), and with greater agility by simplifying the provisioning of new virtual machines. However, one domain where virtualization has increased complexity is in the area of software licensing.
There has been a range of responses by software vendors to virtualization. Some vendors have put limitations on the virtual environments they will support. Vendors have also responded by adding specific terms that must be met in order for the organization to be compliant. This has increased the complexity of software licensing in virtualized environments.
At the same time, the ease of provisioning new virtual machines has increased the risks that an organization will be non-compliant. In a physical environment, provisioning a new machine is a lengthy process that involves the purchase of the hardware, and the deployment of the operating system and applications. There are many points in the process where compliance checks can be performed. In a virtual environment, the creation of a new machine is as easy as a file copy and pressing the start button. Permission to create a new machine in a virtual environment is much more easily given, so that the provisioning controls usual in a physical environment are absent. All up, it is much easier for an organization to drift into non-compliance in a virtualized environment.
A trend that is has not emerged yet, but will doubtless happen soon, is the vendor virtualization audit. For the past several years, the number of vendor audits has been on the steady increase. Vendors have wanted to ensure that customers are paying fully for the software they are using and have installed. To date, vendors have focused on desktop audits, an area where organizations traditionally have less control and so are at greater risk of being under licensed. Vendor audit teams have been very successful at generating revenue for their companies – it is just a matter of time before they turn their attention to the virtualized servers running high value business applications.
The three trends of (1) licensing complexity, (2) ease of provisioning, and (3) audit risk, create a “perfect storm” of virtualized licensing issues for businesses.
It is already being reported that concern about these issues has slowed the deployment of virtualized environments in cautious organizations. Less cautious organizations run the risk of being “busted” as the first organization to fail a virtualization audit. At that point in time, CIOs around the world will say stop! We have to get the virtualized licensing under control.
For both cautious organizations postponing the benefits of virtualization, and less cautious organizations taking avoidable risks, the antidote is a well-defined strategy of tools and processes to ensure virtualized license compliance.
Now where could we get one of those?
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