Cloud computing creates licensing nightmares for compliance managers and their customers. With widely varying metrics, legacy contracts, and evolving policies, cloud-based apps seem impossible to audit. Still, license managers need to find ways to enfold cloud services in their compliance management programs.

At SAM Summit in Chicago, July 11-13, we’ll be covering the latest trends and challenges licenses manager will face for SAM and the cloud. IBSMA’s panel of experts led by David Welch, NetApp’s director of the licensing services group, met recently to explore ideas for ensuring compliance in a quickly evolving technology space that has no standards, yet.

“Product teams are struggling with how to measure and monitor in the cloud. You, who are auditors, can play a valuable role in figuring this out,” said Welch. “You have the forensic capability to figure out how and where and why the software is being used, what the monitoring stream should look like, and what attributes to bill against.”