In October 2002, three of us founded IPR-Insights – almost simultaneously with the emergence of software asset management (SAM) as a separate profession. We saw the need for vendor-independent licensing consultancy for all companies, and also that users were at the mercy of software vendors’ dictates; their licensing terms were difficult to understand and often changed. This gave rise to the idea of a SAM consultant company that would be on the side of the user and create a level playing field between software vendors and business users.
We have come a long way from the early days of convincing enterprises that it was not just the ‘compliance’ problem of illegal software use or the potential penalty of a BSA crackdown that needed to be considered, till nowadays when the focus of our clients is on comprehensive and up-to-date record keeping and the optimization of their software asset management processes and licensing costs.
It’s been a long journey, with a few bumps of course, but also a lot of successes that I think we can be justifiably proud of:
- First and foremost, the team of professionals who have earned our company first national, then regional, and now international recognition. Their expertise enables us to support business users with a portfolio of services covering the entire SAM process. We always emphasize that software management is a complex discipline, requiring a “blend” of different professional skills. It is our clear experience that it is not only recruits with an IT degree who can become excellent licensing consultants, software awareness specialists, or infrastructure consultants.
- We act as a vendor-independent consultant – the Robin Hood of licensing, as we say – developing solutions that enable business users to reduce both their software licensing costs and the risks associated with the use of inappropriately licensed software.
- Our own experts and our customers have quickly come to realize that even the most professional license manager can only be successful and successful with the right tools. Therefore, after a fruitless search for a suitable SAM tool, we developed our SAM-Insights system in 2005 to enable meaningful software management by working at the user’s fingertips. As a result of a lot of development work, we will soon be able to present version 5 to our customers!
- In the meantime, the software management profession has also developed its own standard and we saw this as a way to help home-grown professionals. So, by 2008, with the support of our experts, the Hungarian version of the ISO 19770-1 standard was ready.
- Another reason for the vulnerability of users vis-à-vis software vendors was that licensing professionals could only learn the skills of their profession at their own “expense”, and could not acquire this knowledge either in schools or from vendors. This is why in 2009 we launched our LicenseAcademy training series, which offers a practical “survival kit” on licensing and software management issues.
- Over two decades, we have delivered more than 700 software asset management projects for nearly 200 national and international clients. In addition to one-off services, we also undertake the implementation of comprehensive SAM projects tailored to our clients’ SAM maturity level or even outsource the SAM process.
- We have been included in CIO Applications Europe’s “TOP 10 Asset Management Consulting/Services Companies” and IPR-Insights has become VoquzLabs’ largest international partner in 2022 – providing SAP users with license optimization and role and entitlement management solutions using their samQ and setQ tools.
According to Eurostat (similar to the EU average as a whole), 83% of Hungarian businesses live for 1 year, 58% live for 3 years, and 44% live for 5 years… We are among the lucky ones who “recently” celebrated our 10th and now our 20th birthday, and we are confident that our customers will continue to trust us for many years to come!
Thank you:
Sándor Zsoldos
