New voice service (8400 Euro/year) brings overview in the license jungle

With the Vendor Observer Competence Center (VOCC), Voice e. V. now offers a service that transparently prepares license information and also provides a platform for the confidential exchange of experience.

The association is supported by the software asset management specialist Complion AG and by the international law firm Osborne Clarke.

In its first stage of expansion, the VOCC focuses on the providers IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Patrick Quellmalz, Managing Director of Voice CIO Service, sums up the benefits of the new service:

"VOCC helps user companies license correctly, even in dynamic environments, while protecting them from unjustified claims by software vendors."

Inquiries and audit demands from software manufacturers as to whether one is sufficiently licensed regularly cause IT managers and purchasers in user companies to break out in a sweat.

Licensing terms change frequently and are sometimes different even for products from the same vendor. Since almost all companies use products and services from multiple vendors and now also frequently use cloud services from different providers, a quick answer to the vendor's question about correct licensing and contractual use is often anything but simple.

Especially since the usage situation of users can also be very dynamic. Larger companies have their own specialists who try to keep track of the license jungle with the help of so-called asset management software.

But even they are not automatically on the safe side in terms of licensing. It is often not possible for individual companies to assess when and where they run into a licensing risk.

The software vendors' communication in this regard is sometimes quite cryptic and anything but clear, for example, with regard to indirect use, the valuation of virtual machines or the use of cloud (micro) services.

With immediate effect, Voice e. V. is therefore offering the Vendor Observer Competence Center (VOCC), a service that collects all the information available on the market on product, contract and licensing terms and presents it in a comprehensible form.

Also part of VOCC is a monthly telephone situation meeting in which members exchange confidential information with each other. In addition, the service informs its subscribers about their current license risk. The number of providers monitored is to be increased to ten within the next nine months.

In this way, VOCC covers large areas of the licensing business and can effectively support its customers. The service is initially available exclusively to Voice members. For them, it costs 8400 euros per year.