Discussion on:

Best practices for software license management

It's free, it's not perfect, but it was what I used to deal with a Microsoft audit last year and it pretty much did the job.

The points in the article are good and Marks recommendation of SpiceWorks equally valid.
You biggest risk will be servers where the majority of your IT spend goes. It will also be the most difficult to inventory especially if you have more than one DC.

A key point missed by the article was virtualization, It's difficult to inventory accurately given you must link the virtual machines to their underlying physical hardware for most of the big vendors.

There are lots of tools out there but getting the services of a vendor specific SAM expert will be invaluable followed by an inventor tool that covers the vendor and specific products you are focused on.

To be sure that your licensing position is correct you must have a highly detailed and accurate Inventory tool, otherwise the results are flawed.

Find out more here:

http://www.certero.com/UK/Software-Asset-Management/AssetStudio-Manager/21395

Please take a look at License Manager System called SecureOnCloud at http://www.secureoncloud.com. This is a floating licensing system thought for .NET developers. This offers a ready-to-integrate Licensing System for .NET Developers at a really affordable price.

It has a License Manager and a .NET dll than can be easily plugged in your code. There is a free demo and free client source code available to download. There is also a License Generator tool that allows generating a number of licenses (from one to unlimited) that can be valid simultaneously against the License Manager. In Premium version you have the full source code available. The code is properly dotfuscated to avoid piracy.