Motorola Droid XYBOARD 10.1 :: ICS Update Changed IMEI Device ID?

My fleet of fifteen client Xyboard tablets on Verizon received their OTA push of the Android 4.0.4 operating system this morning. I was pretty stoked until one of our primary software components wouldn't function. After quite a bit of work, we discovered that the Verizon/Motorola system update had changed all of the Xyboard's IMEI Device ID numbers by appending an additional digit to them. This changed the previous 14 character device ID numbers to fifteen character device ID numbers.The result was that any software that had license binding to the device ID no longer functioned. This was true for our Sygic navigation and routing software. We had to completely relicense this software component on 15 tablets.First, I wanted to warn other Xyboard users of this potential problem. Second, I wonder if anyone can provide any idea of why this happened. Many companies, like ours, enter these IMEI Device ID numbers into our capital asset inventory log system because, supposedly, they never change and could be used by the police if one was ever stolen. What could possibly be the reason for changing them in a system update?? Now, not only did it break some of our most important software, angering our clients and causing us enormous headaches, but it also makes our entire capital asset inventory incorrect.