The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) was set up in 1984 by the British Computer Society's Copyright Committee. It was the world's first anti-software piracy organization working to protect the intellectual property rights of software publishers. The federation is now asking its members to look into the often puzzling world of virtualization licensing. The anti-piracy group is bringing together many of it The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) was set up in 1984 by the British Computer Society’s Copyright Committee. It was the world’s first anti-software piracy organization working to protect the intellectual property rights of software publishers. The federation is now asking its members to look into the often puzzling world of virtualization licensing.The anti-piracy group is bringing together many of its members such as Hewlett Packard, Hitachi Europe and Symantec/Altiris in hopes of coming up with ways to address this potential problem. Virtualization is growing faster than ever, and companies are finding out that one huge bonus that the technology offers is its ability to quickly and easily provision a virtual server. Unfortunately, this can also lead to a licensing problem if left unchecked.FAST believes that companies are deciding to implement virtualization within their environments without understanding the ramifications of licensing and non-compliance first. FAST chief executive, John Lovelock, believes that in many cases, the virtual environment can easily get out of control and that software vendors should provide a way to help measure usage in a virtual environment. Lovelock added, “It is vital at this point that we demand greater clarity from vendors and look at the potential to canvas virtualization software vendors for their view on the future direction.”For the most part, software vendors certainly aren’t doing customers any favors when it comes to licensing in a virtual environment. To be honest, in many respects, it can be quite confusing as to the verbiage found in many EULA’s when it comes time to installing and/or tracking software in a virtual machine. Microsoft has recently attempted to address the issue, whether you are in favor of what they have done or not. Third-party virtualization management solutions are now starting to address the issue as well, trying to gain insight into what’s going on within the virtual machine. Software Development