SAM License Compliance & Audits 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A software vendor initiates an audit and requests license reconciliation data within 30 days. What is the FIRST step the SAM team should take?
- Immediately purchase additional licenses to cover any gaps
- Assemble an internal audit response team and gather current license entitlements (Correct answer)
- Refuse the audit request until legal counsel reviews the vendor contract
- Notify all employees to uninstall any unlicensed software
Correct answer: Assemble an internal audit response team and gather current license entitlements
Assembling a response team and gathering entitlement records is the critical first step to understand your position before responding to the vendor.
Question 2: Which metric is used to measure the difference between the number of licenses owned and the number of licenses deployed?
- License utilization rate
- Effective license position (ELP) (Correct answer)
- Software density ratio
- Deployment coverage index
Correct answer: Effective license position (ELP)
The Effective License Position (ELP) quantifies whether an organization is over-licensed, under-licensed, or compliant for a given software title.
Question 3: A company discovers mid-audit that 50 copies of a CAD application are installed but only 30 licenses were purchased. The shortfall most likely constitutes:
- A minor compliance gap that can be remediated after the audit closes
- An unlicensed use situation exposing the company to financial and legal liability (Correct answer)
- A usage anomaly that does not require immediate action
- A vendor billing error that should be disputed
Correct answer: An unlicensed use situation exposing the company to financial and legal liability
Installing more copies than licensed is unlicensed use, which creates financial and legal exposure including potential back-licensing fees and penalties.
Question 4: What is the purpose of a 'true-up' in enterprise software agreements?
- To negotiate lower renewal pricing based on usage data
- To periodically reconcile actual usage against contracted quantities and pay for any overages (Correct answer)
- To uninstall software that exceeds the licensed quantity
- To transfer unused licenses to a different business unit
Correct answer: To periodically reconcile actual usage against contracted quantities and pay for any overages
A true-up is a scheduled reconciliation where the customer pays for any consumption that exceeded the contracted quantity during the covered period.
Question 5: During a software audit, a vendor claims that running virtualized instances of their product requires separate licenses for each VM. Which document should the SAM team consult first?
- The vendor's published price list
- The End User License Agreement (EULA) and any virtualization-specific addenda (Correct answer)
- The company's internal IT asset inventory
- The vendor's public website FAQ
Correct answer: The End User License Agreement (EULA) and any virtualization-specific addenda
The EULA and any associated virtualization addenda define the specific licensing rules that govern virtual environments for that product.
Question 6: An organization wants to reduce audit risk by maintaining continuous compliance rather than reacting to vendor audits. Which practice BEST supports this goal?
- Conducting a comprehensive internal software audit only before contract renewals
- Implementing ongoing software asset discovery and reconciliation processes (Correct answer)
- Blocking all software installations without prior IT approval
- Relying solely on vendor-provided consumption reports
Correct answer: Implementing ongoing software asset discovery and reconciliation processes
Continuous discovery and reconciliation keeps the organization's license position current, minimizing surprises during vendor-initiated audits.
Question 7: A software publisher uses a 'named user' license model. Under this model, which of the following actions would constitute a compliance violation?
- A named user accessing the software from multiple devices
- Two employees sharing a single named user license on alternating shifts (Correct answer)
- A named user accessing the software remotely via VPN
- A named user using both the desktop and mobile version of the application
Correct answer: Two employees sharing a single named user license on alternating shifts
Named user licenses are assigned to a specific individual, and sharing one license between two users violates the license terms.
SAM License Compliance & Audits 2
A software vendor initiates an audit and requests license reconciliation data within 30 days.
What is the FIRST step the SAM team should take?