BoE Merchant Bank, the merchant and investment banking division of BoE Bank, has awarded Unisys a three-year contract for the provision of a Microsoft licence compliance service.
The Unisys e@ction Compliance Services ensure that BoE Merchant Bank has an up-to-date electronic inventory of all software and hardware in use in its IT environment, together with demonstrable compliance with Microsoft`s software licensing guidelines.
The service started with a physical audit of software and hardware in use at the BoE division, identification of shortfalls and recommended courses of action, and the implementation of a central electronic repository to store hardware and software licence and configuration information.
In addition, the portfolio of services includes the installation of electronic auditing agents with discrepancy alert notification on each machine, ensuring that IT management can keep track of unauthorised software installations or configuration changes. Dan Zulu, head of IT of BoE Merchant Bank & BoE Securities, says: "Management of licences for Windows desktops and servers is a major drain on resources that could be better focused on core aspects of our business.
"At the same time, it is critical for an organisation of our size to ensure that we are completely in line with Microsoft`s licensing requirements. We cannot risk the penalties that accompany unlicensed software, such as bad publicity and litigation."
The Unisys service will also help BoE Merchant Bank to ensure it does not overspend on applications licences by allowing it to limit licences for use of software packages to the users that need them to do their work. For this reason, Zulu anticipates that the service will help each department in the BoE Merchant Bank, BoE Personal Stockbroker and Securities division to manage their IT budgets better.
In addition, the financial services institution will be able to prevent end-users from using productivity-draining chat applications, games, and other unnecessary software downloaded from the Web.
The service covers operating systems and applications licences on more than 500 Windows-based desktops, notebooks and servers across BoE Merchant Bank.
The financial services institution is in the throes of migrating desktop users from Office 97 to Office 2000, and is also replacing Windows NT with Windows 2000.
According to Zulu, BoE Merchant Bank chose Unisys as its provider of Microsoft Licence Compliance services because of the IT group`s status as one of the group`s strategic vendors.
"I regard the money we are spending on this service from Unisys as an investment in the security and productivity of the company rather than as an expense," Zulu says.
Chris Jacks, portfolio sales executive at Unisys Africa, says: "Physical audits of equipment and manual reconciliation of software licences is a time-consuming task, and one which is not core to the business. The picture is complicated by the fact that most organisations are constantly upgrading their PC environments to drive more value from their IT investments.
"Nonetheless, with the emphasis software vendors and the Business Software Alliance are putting on weeding out illegal software use, it is critically important for companies to make sure all applications and operating systems are properly licensed and paid for."
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