Cloud makes many things easier. But one thing that has become much more complex is maintaining software license compliance, according to Michael Corey and Dean Bolton, co-founders of LicenseFortress, who will give a Data Summit presentation titled “Straight Talk on the Software License Landscape in the Cloud.”

Data Summit 2018 will take place this year at the Hyatt Regency Boston, May 22-23, with pre-conference workshops on Monday, May 21. Cognitive Computing Summit and Hadoop Day will also be co-located at the event.

With today’s infrastructure spanning public and private clouds and on-premise, environments are becoming so complex that many customers don’t really understand them, “and it is becoming commonplace for them to have more licenses than they need with the net effect that they are paying substantially more than they have to,” says Corey.

As it gets easier to take advantage of cloud services, it is becoming much harder for companies to be sure of what they have and what they are paying for, which matters more than ever since some vendors have turned to licensing audits as a way of boosting revenue, Corey contends.

“If you have a company and someone downloads software, you are responsible for paying for it. Pretty much around the world, the burden of guilt lies with the customers—not the vendor—and not everyone understands that. Every enterprise company has a right to audit you and the burden of proof is on you.”

People forget that with ease of use there also comes responsibility and liability, he noted.

“We are going to talk about all these things that are going on in the licensing marketplace that directly affect companies’ bottom lines,” said Corey.