You may know that several manufacturers have announced price rises in the UK due to the Pound falling. Here is the reference table:
Are you prepared for the price rises? (Source: Softcat)
So how can you ensure that any forthcoming changes to licensing commercials have a minimum impact on increasingly tight purse strings? Being able to focus on the software you actually use, rather than on what you have deployed, means that you save money. The data that software buyers should have available when they renew software contracts is as follows:
- How many licenses you have. This is the number of licenses that have been paid for or are currently being paid for. There are different types of licenses and you should record the details about duration, concurrency etc. You should also know the prices you are paying for these licenses.
- How much of the software has been deployed. This should match the number of licenses that you have paid for. If you have deployed more than you are paying for, you might owe the software vendor money. If you have deployed less, you might be wasting money.
- How much of the software is being used. You may have licensed and deployed the same amount of software, but do you know if the software is being used. You could have 100 licenses and 100 instances installed but if you only ever use 20, you are wasting 80% of the cost and associated IT resources and this software is costing you up to 5 times what it should.
To summarise, make sure you have the right information about what you actually need before renewing your contract.
To understand more about how software licensing efficiency can be improved, please contact us here.