Best known for the database management tool Toad, Quest provides solutions which include data protection, access management and unified endpoint management. Companies often use more of their tools than they think. It is common to find company names such as Dell Software or One Identity instead when discovering Quest products.
Quest can easily go under the radar for licence compliance programmes. This is dangerous as Quest licensing metrics can be complex, leaving organisations exposed to large financial settlements in the event of a Quest audit.
FisherITS list Quest as a high-risk vendor who deploy aggressive auditing tactics and frequently audit their customer base. We work with Quest customers, using our extensive Quest licensing expertise to defend against licence audits.
Customers frequently have trouble with Quest audits and can be left with a potential audit settlement fee of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Performing an internal review first before engaging with Quest can avoid unpleasant surprises later down the road and can help you approach Quest more comfortably when your renewal comes up.
Key to successfully managing Quest licensing and optimising spend is to understand your Quest contract terms, application usage and Quest licensing metrics. Quest has a wide variety of licensing metrics, so picking the right one is difficult but important. The Quest licensing experts at FisherITS can help you navigate these complex areas of Quest licence management.
To learn more how FisherITS can help your organisation review Quest licensing or defend against a Quest audit, contact us today.
FisherITS can assist your organisation to perform a Quest software licence contract review, identifying the key terms, licence numbers and licence metrics within your contract and order documents that govern the usage of your Quest software. Your contract will always have precedence over any online documentation.
Developers and IT Admins often use Quest tools in their day-to-day activities and often install them without reviewing the licences. FisherITS will work with your team to discover all deployed Quest products and related products that may present compliance or overspend risk. Our team will review the data to identify usage numbers, interrogating the results to provide a clear overview of your Quest estate.
Quest has a wide variety of licensing metrics with ambiguously worded definitions. The use of similar sounding licence metrics such as ‘Managed User,’ ‘Managed User Account’ and ‘Enabled User Account’ often cause confusion and lead to costly compliance settlements.
Our expert Quest consultants will work with your team to establish the contractual metrics that govern your Quest software usage, helping you to remain compliant or respond effectively to a Quest audit request. Our team can also help you avoid common pitfalls such as Toad Seat licences, where evaluation copies are easily downloaded and installed by developers. Use of this software will require a full license though and, even worse, one installation on a server may make all your server admins liable for a license.
Quest deploys three types of licence compliance audit – a Self-Audit, Quest Led Audit, or Big Four Led Audit. The process to defend an audit can be found in the FisherITS Audit Survival Guide. FisherITS has a track record of successfully defending Quest compliance audits, vastly reducing or eliminating the required settlement fee.
As a particularly notorious auditor with a track record using debatable practices resulting in large compliance claims, it is key to control the audit process. Our team will help you through the entire process from start to finish to control communication and make sure Quest stays within the contractual boundaries.
If a compliance claim has been made, we will validate all findings in the audit report to weed out errors and ambiguous claims. Our many years supporting businesses with audit negotiations will ensure an optimal financial settlement with only software you actually use.
If you are under active audit by Quest, or would like to prepare for an upcoming Quest audit, contact us today.
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I am a Senior Manager at FisherITS and I am responsible for the overall delivery of Compliance Optimisation and SAM Maturity Transformation programmes. I started my career as a license compliance auditor at a “Big Four” firm and have acted on behalf of a number of large software vendors by leading over a hundred enterprise-level license audits.
At FisherITS, my focus has been on providing my “poacher-turned-game-keeper” expertise to large enterprise customers to help them address tactical and strategic challenges in SAM and software licensing.
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