While it won’t save you money when negotiating the initial contract, asking your software supplier to remove the audit clause from their contract could well save you a bunch of money down the line. An audit clause gives your software supplier the right to audit your usage of their software at any time. Time and again software suppliers have audited users and found their actual software use is above the contracted level and so more licenses (and money) is demanded. My blog last week reminded you to check usage rights to avoid non-compliance. So during contract negotiations, always ask that [...]

Software license types and definitions vary from one vendor to another. Failing to clarify what the license types are and what the definitions mean in your software contract can cost you money! Before you sign on the dotted line, always ensure you have clarified and understood what it is you are buying and make sure that license types and definitions are clearly stated in the software contract.
Software suppliers are adept at auditing users and finding businesses where their software is being used in breach of the license types or definitions in their contract; the net result is usually an [...]

It looks like email could well be the next battleground for Microsoft and Google to fight over market share.
As organisations evaluate e-mail strategies over the next five years, Microsoft and Google will compete for the bulk of the market, says analyst Forrester Research. This is due to cloud-based e-mail being the cheap entry point to a deeper and more profitable collaboration deal for vendors. Microsoft and Google will be happy to outbid each other to win your e-mail business because they know there’s more money to be made in conferencing, team sites, videoconferencing and social software down the line. Cisco, [...]

Last week a new client of ours was asking about software license usage rights. Specifically they wanted to know what was the difference between a concurrent user and a named user. The simple answer is that there’s a lot of difference, including the price per user. The definitions of usage terms vary between suppliers and failing to get usage terms clarified can cost you money when the supplier finds you are ’under licensed’ after only a year or two. If you’re buying software then clarifying and agreeing usage rights should be a part of your negotiation strategy.
Confirm the numbers and types of [...]

IT cost savings come in many forms and here’s one that caught my eye the other day.
HSBC has saved more than $1m in energy costs after rolling out technology that shuts down 300,000 PCs during evenings and weekends. The bank is implementing the shut-down system across its international network, eventually reaching all 8,000 offices in the 88 countries it operates in.
The technology, called NightWatchman from supplier 1E, saves data and closes applications before shutting down PCs. The bank is one of the biggest in the world and says it keeps costs down through “ruthless” standardisation of its IT across the [...]

SAP has reported software and related service revenues of €2.3bn in preliminary financial results for the second quarter of 2010, up 16% compared with a year ago. Software revenues alone were up 17% to €637m and total revenues were up 12% to €2.9bn. Profit after tax was up 15% to €491m.
Bill McDermott, co-chief executive of SAP, said large, mid-sized and small enterprises are continuing to invest for growth across many industries
SAP also announced that it has completed the cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Sybase. Sybase will operate as a separate company under current chief [...]

CIOs and IT directors are attempting to slash IT maintenance costs, as a matter of urgency, to free up their budgets.
On the one hand, hardware and software maintenance represents the single largest IT expense for many organisations, but it’s also a huge source of revenue for IT vendors. This conflict presents many problems for IT consumers.
Gartner has recently produced a list of recommended negotiable items:

The right to regular, appropriate, predictable updates to software products
The right to clearly defined response times and IT support levels based on application criticality and other business factors
The right to reasonable, predictable percentage ranges [...]

Name change; it’s one way of leaving the past behind. For the second time in just five years, the company formerly known as Computer Associates, and then CA Inc, is changing its name. The previous name change was an effort to distance itself from a financial scandal that saw then CEO Sanjay Kumar plead guilty to fraud charges in 2006. But that rushed change of identity left the firm with a name that it now says doesn’t convey enough about what it does. It’s also not great for search engines: incoming CEO William McCracken said he was fed up with [...]

There’s nothing new under the Sun. Just when we were all starting to wonder what IT Buyers in the USA did between 9 to 5, Gartner has used it’s time wisely and taken the time to find out. 
IT buyers in the USA have a high focus on IT costs, according to Gartner. It would appear that IT buyers in the US pay less attention to business innovation in IT as a driver for using IT services. The survey revealed companies belonging to all sizes, showed a movement away from aggressive adoption, and indicated their top driver is to reduce the [...]

UK Taxpayers are paying up to £6bn a year more than necessary for IT outsourcing services, says Compass, a consultancy that benchmarks the cost of IT in major government departments. Compass says it reached the £6bn figure after comparing the prices paid by government departments for their outsourced contracts with the market prices paid by the private sector for a comparable bundle of services. Compass says the UK public sector is paying 40% or more above the market rate for outsourced services. No surprise there then. We all know the Public sector pays more and their archaic procurement processes mean [...]