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The Surprising Risks of Counterfeit Software in Business (Microsoft, March 2009)
Summary: This White Paper continues the story that began in the 2006 IDC paper (as detailed below) and focuses on the surprising risks of counterfeit in mid-market business computing environments. The basis of the whitepaper is a study conducted in the UK with licensing reviews from 30 randomly selected mid-market businesses.
The study revealed that:
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37% of software found during the study turned out to be counterfeit.
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In addition, all of the counterfeit found was of high quality, which means that the businesses likely purchased in good faith).
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Each midsize business found to have counterfeit software in the study spent an average of £7,185 GBP ($10,222 USD) on these purchases, which in turn provided them with software that was neither licensed nor genuine.
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Impact of Unlicensed Software on Mid-Market Companies (Harrison Group, September 2008)
Summary: Companies must weigh the trade-off of purchasing and using genuine, fully licensed software versus using unlicensed software. This White Paper explores this trade-off and concludes that companies with unlicensed software do not have lower IT spend, but may incur far greater risk of system failure, data loss and employee discontent. This paper looks at the differences between mid-market companies (organizations with greater than 24 PCs and less than 500 PCs) that are committed to using genuine, fully licensed software to those that allow unlicensed software to play a role in their firm. Also reviewed within this paper are differences in IT system failure rates, IT spending, perceived risks of counterfeit software, and fundamental company success metrics. To capture a strong cross representation of large markets, we included the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Brazil, each equally represented here.
The primary findings outlined within the paper are consistent across the emerging and developed markets tested:
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Companies less committed to using genuine software are significantly more likely to have system failures leading to lost critical data and employee downtime.
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Businesses using fully licensed software report that they are growing faster, are more profitable, and are more likely to be leaders in their market relative to those using a mix of genuine and unlicensed software.
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Using only fully licensed software does not result in higher IT costs for a business.
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The Risks of Obtaining and Using Pirated Software (IDC, October 2006)
Summary: This White Paper presents the results of an investigation by IDC into the prevalence of malicious code and unwanted software at Web sites that offer pirated software, counterfeit product keys, crack tools, and key generators for Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Office. The investigation also looked for such code in key generators and crack tools that are available for download at various Web sites and from peer-to-peer networks. The intent of the research was to test the degree to which users obtaining and using pirated software are exposed to computer security risks in doing so.
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