Autodesk compliance initiative in KSA to educate businesses
Autodesk, a company specializing in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, in conjunction with the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Information, has launched a new license compliance initiative in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to help educate businesses, students and the general public of the benefits of using legal software.
A report from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has revealed that in KSA alone, the commercial value of unlicensed software stood at USD304m (an estimated 1,140m Saudi Riyals) in 2009. Although the situation is improving, software piracy remains among the most significant threats to the IT industry in the region.
“Our approach is to work with our channel partners and industry organisations, like the BSA, to highlight the many benefits of license compliance to businesses across the KSA,” says Anders Arthur, Regional Director, MEA for Autodesk.
“At a time of continuing economic uncertainty, businesses are looking for new ways of generating and protecting revenue streams,” he adds. “Being compliant often helps them save money and avoid potential damages for noncompliance.”
Autodesk encourages the practice of Software Asset Management (SAM) as a way for customers to ensure license compliance throughout their organisation. It provides a free SAM toolkit containing guidelines and templates to help them ensure they are using software in a legal and ethical manner. In addition, its product manager software download helps customers and users better manage and track installed Autodesk products.
The SAM approach enables organisations to save money by helping them:
- Eliminate or reallocate underused software licenses
- Limit overhead associated with managing and supporting unused software
- Reduce the potential for unexpected software costs
- Avoid paying damages for non-compliance
- Reduce the risk of infection by viruses through the downloading or purchasing of software from unauthorised Websites
“Our approach is conciliatory based on working with organisations to ensure compliance,” continues Anders Arthur. “We only ever seek legal recourse against copyright infringers as a last resort with customers who have rejected all attempts to help them get compliant.”
