Software compliance reviews are “a fact of life.” According to a Gartner study undertaken over a six-year period, on average, 68 percent of organisations receive at least one audit letter each year (Source Garner G00278199, Sept 2015). Organisations have therefore become accustomed to receiving these audit letters, or so-called “Love Letters,” from their software publishers. While some cry that romance is dead, clearly the good old-fashioned love letter is alive and kicking when it comes to the ever-tested relationship between software publishers and their customers.

Love Letters from your software publisher are not always as straightforward as they seem. While they may be positioned as audits to verify your compliance with the publisher’s licensing terms (i.e. confirming both parties are being treated fairly in the relationship), in many instances publishers use them to drive additional revenue from their customers.

Software compliance reviews, or audits, have developed over recent years as major income contributors for the software publishers. According to our own research, many software publishers are running this income stream in a very professional way, with either in-house or third-party resources. In-house publisher audit personnel now have clear revenue objectives and targets for the number of audits they must perform. While, years ago, this domain was dominated by the top 10 publishers, recently it seems that any publisher is using this method to verify compliance and generate additional income. Lately we have also seen an increasing number of mid-size companies becoming a target for software audits, since they often don’t have the resources for in depth Software Asset Management in place. Software audits are no longer only something that large companies have to worry about.

At the same time, some software publishers are guilty of going far beyond what was signed and agreed in the audit clause to exploit their customers and extract as much revenue as possible from an audit.