Ottsville, PA, (Eracent) September 9, 2008 - The draft standard, identified as ISO/IEC 19770-2, “Information technology – Software asset management – Part 2: Software Identification Tag,” moves toward becoming an official ISO standard. The standard has gone through one last round of verification and editing, and is now being distributed to the public as a last validation step, prior to being submitted as a final committee draft (FCD) to ISO/IEC national bodies for voting. This validation phase ends on September 19, 2008, and subsequent to will no longer be available for download and public review. This is a last chance for users and organizations to download the latest updated draft and validate the software identification tag structure before the document is locked down under ISO/IEC copyright requirements. ISO/IEC 19770-2 is available to download through Eracent at:

http://www.eracent.com/iso/isoiecdraft_19770-2.html

Eracent's team of experts performed thorough measures to support development of the standard. Krzysztof (Chris) Baczkiewicz, IT Standards Support Department Manager for Eracent, and official editor for this draft stated, “We want to encourage IT professionals involved in Software Asset Management to participate in this final validation process to ensure all final edits have not changed the context of the standard.”

According to Steve Klos, the Convener of the OWG, the group responsible for the development of the draft, the ISO/IEC 19770-2 draft has gone through one last phase of editing for consistency and validation prior to being submitted as a final committee draft. He indicated that Chris from Eracent has been instrumental in the development of the standard, and is very pleased with the collaboration and with all the experts at Eracent.

Steve stated: "Eracent has played a pivotal role in the development of the standard. Their knowledge of software asset management as well as their technical ability to develop a schema for the ISO/IEC 19770-2 standard has been a key to the rapid development of the standard. They have set the bar for how quickly and effectively work can be done. The team has exceeded my expectations on what could be delivered in a very short period of time. It is a pleasure to work with professionals like those at Eracent, who represent the best of the SAM eco-system."

Eracent's experts were responsible for the core of the standard, which is the definition of the tag elements and the tag structure, including the XML Schema Definition.

David Bicket, the convener of the WG21 working group, which is the official group developing SAM standards under ISO/IEC stated: “Chris was an invaluable key member of the team, developing 19770-2 and provided essential input, as well as helping, to ensure accuracy and consistency in a highly technical area. He did a fantastic job helping us make it happen, and we had tremendous support from his colleagues at Eracent as well. I am happy to have him on board and looking forward to cooperating with him in further standards projects.”

David also confirmed that Eracent’s contribution to the development of the standard made the rapid completion of the draft possible. He admitted that Without Eracent’s involvement, this standard would not be ready, this far along in the development process.

ISO/IEC 19770-2 defines the necessary information and structure, providing a method to accurately identify software packages, not just files. This is a key step in making software more manageable. So far, Eracent's EAM solution has been one of a few tools on the market that manages to identify software packages. Thanks to ISO/IEC 19770-2 and Eracent’s contribution, software packages identification process will be available for the entire SAM industry.

Chris stated: "Knowledge of industry is always crucial for the development of standards. That is why Eracent is participating in SAM standard, in the domain where it is an expert.”

The next projects in the 19770 series are part 3, Software Entitlement Tag, and another on a staged approach to SAM conformance. Chris accepted the role of Project Editor of 19770-2 as well as 19770-3. He will be responsible for maintaining the standards until their publication.