Autodesk Audit | Autodesk License Audit | Autodesk Compliance

Autodesk is considered very aggressive in the industry when it comes to software audits.They regularly audit their several million customers worldwide. The manufacturer invokes its audit clause in the license agreement. Then, according to Autodesk’s wishes, everything should happen very quickly. With short deadlines, customers are expected to install the ScanWin tool and transmit the data obtained. Regularly, significant non-compliance is discovered and billed to the customer. As the Autodesk licensing rules are more than obscure it is tricky for customers to remain compliant.  

Customers often feel helpless and up against the wall. If isolated customers dare to object in the process, Autodesk’s auditors very quickly escalate to the legal department or even external lawyers. Many are intimidated by this behavior and play along – with costly consequences ahead. 

The all-important question is which license terms you legally agreed to and what exactly you agreed to. As always in software audits, many claims are made by the manufacturers that vanish into thin air upon closer examination.  

With the right arguments and negotiation strategies, you can fend off Autodesk audits or at least significantly mitigate the risk of uncovered non-compliance. This will save you a lot of time and money. 

Again and again, we experience in Autodesk audits that customers feel too safe. After all, you only have a few licenses – how bad can it get? It may be that you only have 10 licenses and think that non-compliance is not an issue for you. Unfortunately, it often turns out in the audit that Autodesk thinks you need 5-10 times that number of licenses. How big is the damage in your case? 

We have experienced a lot of software audits since our foundation in 2009 and know the strategies of the auditors. We also have a huge network of CIOs, license managers, specialized lawyers and specialized consultants. In addition, we have founded the Lighthouse Alliance, a customer alliance against revenue-driven software audits. More than 30 companies from a wide range of industries now belong to this alliance – including many large and mid-sized companies as well as public sector entities.