How to control delays in purchasing your product
The entire software industry has been dramatically affected over the past year with tougher and tougher requirements for protection on software purchases. Corporate legal departments have received a mandate to make demands of their software vendors for greater protection from patent infringement and/or third party (or open source) code that may not have a clean pedigree. Greater demands have also been made for insurance protection for all kinds of risks including data theft as well as property damage and personnel injuries.
Additional demands have been made for source code escrow and code examination for Trojan horses, time bombs, viruses and deactivation routines. Some companies are even demanding the right to examine a software company’s engineering development process, QA procedures and even emergency planning. They may ask to examine the company’s financials in order to determine whether your vendor will be around much longer. Background checks may be demanded of support and development personnel who might be viewing your sensitive data.
How does this impact the engineering department when procuring software products? Certainly it can cause significant delays in getting your purchase approved. You may have to do more research to be able to explain to your legal department why you need this product and how much risk the company may incur by its purchase. You may also discover that your legal department has created new policies that your preferred software vendor won’t accept.
What can you do?
Find out as much as you can with regards to your company’s software license policies early on. If there’s going to be discussion over a lot of details, get it started early. If you can discover where your company will bend on licensing requirements that can shorten the cycle. Many companies have a one size fits all license policy that may work for licensing from a Fortune 500 but will not when dealing with a smaller, privately held firm. Talking to your corporate legal staff about the differences will make the accommodation process quicker. You may also be able to give your vendor a heads up to start looking at the agreement sooner, so they can work with you.
Some vendors may be too small to deal with your company. They may not have the legal staff to work with your corporate attorneys or have the experience and knowledge to address your company’s requirements. The sooner your find out, the better prepared you will be.
-Simon
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