Automated licence audit is the process of matching up software that is installed in an organisation with the agreed software licence terms in order to ensure licence compliance.
Discovering installed software and checking it against purchased licences is the key element of software asset management (SAM), and the more easily and thoroughly these audits can be automated, the quicker SAM projects will start to show benefits.
However, there are significant challenges when doing this; some are process-oriented; for example, defining scope, ownership and governance of your SAM project, and some are technical.
Here we describe the technical elements that SAM tools must address; the process challenges will be addressed in future research.