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Computerworld - FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- When Microsoft's Juan Fernando Rivera visited Computerworld late last month, his business card listed his title as director of worldwide license compliance. But Rivera identified himself as the worldwide director of software asset management, or SAM. In an ironic twist, Rivera is now adamant that SAM is not about license compliance. Compliance," he said, "is a byproduct of software asset management." Rivera discussed the role of SAM in an interview with Computerworld.

How do you decide which customers to contact about participating in the SAM program? It changes depending on the marketplace. Germany is a more mature marketplace around software asset management. [Customers and partners there] talk about software asset management, and they decide on their engagement.

For the customers that Microsoft engaged directly, we do some data mining. If you look at companies, for example, that have a volume license purchase history of 300 units, yet under public records they have 1,000 desktops, we tend to think it might be a possibility for that customer to be out of control in terms of the licenses' coverage. So we want to have a conversation with them around software asset management.

Couldn't a customer get confused when compliance is mentioned in the initial e-mail to them? Right. Probably we need to revise that. But it's part of the whole education that we have to do in the field as well around what SAM is and how to educate on SAM.

Isn't it possible that an honest person might get upset by this approach? Yeah, the possibility of that happening does exist. And I'm not going to deny that. But the records that we have are very limited. It's just limited to [volume agreement] purchases. That's why we want to sit down with the customer and have a conversation with them. We're assuming positive intent on the customer's part.

When you target a customer who may really be in compliance, don't you risk losing that customer? That could happen. [And] yes it's risky. But that's why I want to have an open conversation with the customer. And that's why we're pretty transparent about what we do.

Did you sign off on the script that the U.S.-based SAM force seems to work off -- letters that bear striking resemblance to one another and sometimes escalate with a tone that some customers perceive as threatening? No. That's part of the autonomy that they have in terms of how they define the processes. We give them general guidance on that, and if the script calls to be revised, we should spend the time and revise it.