Software license management in the cloud is a mess

Here is a very beautiful and apt article written on software licensing in cloud.

http://info.cloudboltsoftware.com/blog/bid/212556/Cloud-Management-Vendor-Impact-of-Software-Licensing-For-the-Cloud

What’s really odd is that those large vendors also claim to know about cloud. My resulting questions to you are simple:

• Are you relying on cloud strategy from a company that actively uses their software licensing to discourage or prevent you from moving to a more open cloud-centric IT model?
•  Are they leveraging their licenses to force you down the path they want you to?

My subtext:  If you’re listening to intently to those large vendors, the answer to both is “yes”.  Proceed with caution if your primary cloud strategy comes from your hardware, middleware, database, or even OS vendor.

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Many large vendors (it won’t be hard to find which ones I’m talking about here) take specific steps to limit BYSOL (just to name a few I came across):

• Require specific understanding of underlying hardware architectures or processor specifications
• Require licensing based on the physical, not virtual host
• Mandate customers run vendor-provided license tracking, further complicating multi-location or multi-environment installations
• Prohibit software from being virtualized
• Force purchase of higher-cost public cloud resources which rope in the underlying OS license regardless of customer license availability
• Force purchase of “License Mobility” options in order to run software in public clouds