Autonomy, Revenue Recognition and the Duping of HP
HP's acquisition of Autonomy, and subsequent write down of $8.8B amid allegations of fraud by the Autonomy management team, is going to show up as a business school study one of these days, and so it should. The practice of revenue recognition in software, and how you can be misled by it, is simply not well understood by enough senior management and board members. And as companies shift their software products from license to subscription revenue it becomes imperative that board members do understand it or they can be easily [...]