Microsoft unveiled a new volume licensing plan for large organizations this month called Microsoft Select Plus. The program will allow companies to use a single ID to track their licensing contracts across the entire company.

The program will mean bigger discounts as there will be the opportunity to increase your overall “points” - which are used to determine volume qualifications (you must have 500 points to qualify for Select Plus).

You can still qualify for this new program if you are already participating in a volume licensing agreement from Microsoft of if you have an existing Enterprise Agreement, Enterprise Subscription Agreement, Campus Agreement or School Agreement.

The complete announcement can be found here or more info from Microsoft here.

They aren’t joking around - Forbes.com reported today that the BSA spent $360,000 in the second quarter to lobby on patent reform, data security and other issues. They lobbied on new legislation that would create a “new coordinator for intellectual property issues” and improve federal efforts against piracy.

This is a sign of things to come - with Microsoft, McAfee and HP behind this agency, they plan on taking piracy issues to the top - and cracking down on offenders.

Would you stand up against an audit? Be sure, because you’d better believe they will find ya!

The BSA has put out their 2007 Piracy Study, which has revealed Software piracy in just 8 states in the US (AZ, CA, FL, IL, NV, NY, OH, TX) cost vendors  an estimated $4.2 billion, which is higher than the national figure for all other countries in the world except China.  Lost revenues to software distributors and service providers were an additional $11.4 billion, for a total tech industry loss of more than $15 billion. 

$15 Billion - that is nothing to be coy about - the BSA goes a little far as to saying what we could do with kind of money, but that’s a little extreme. Its lost revenue that would be spread among those who benefit from software vendors’ profits - it wouldn’t really “build 100 schools” as they claim. 

It is however, a concern for software vendors so you’d better believe they will try to eliminate this loss in the years to come through audits and more strict control of software licensing.

We talk on this blog all the time about how you really need to keep your software licensing in check and how much it can save by just simply managing software assets - well here is proof! ComputerWeekly wrote up a case study about racing venue Silverstone and how they were able to cut their software licensing costs by 20% simply by implement a SAM system.

How much do you spend per year on licensing costs? Well, take 20% of that and think about what you can do with it. How many more laptops or Blackberry devices you could purchase for your business.

Miro Consulting’s Scott Rosenberg was included in an article in this month’s Processor Magazine about software licensing compliance.

The article is a great piece on the basics of software licensing compliance and asset management for anyone looking for some beginner information on the whys and hows of compliance. Some other tips mentioned in the article are what to do when you are faced with an audit and also how virtualization impacts software licensing.

Check out the complete article here.

The BSA has gotten four more companies in the UK - so called “pirates” - and reached out of court settlements with them. Blitz Corporation, Genetics of Ludlow, Sheffield-based MTL Group and Modular UK all reached settlements described by the BSA as “running into tens of thousands of pounds”.