By Randy Littleson
There's a good blog post by Mark Bartrick of Forrester Research entitled "Three Virtualization Licensing Pitfalls - And How to Avoid Them" on the SourcingFocus blog. In the post, Mark explains the benefits of virtualization, but then focuses on the software licensing pitfalls:
1. Software vendors license virtualization in different ways
2. IT focuses on operational performance, not licensing rules
3. Keeping up-to-date with changing licensing rules is a full-time job
Mark then details the three things you need to do in order to avoid these pitfalls, including a recommendation to use a Software License Optimization solution.
There are a lot of complicated software licensing challenges when you start virtualizing software and systems, so definitely worth a read.