Software Vendor: Check Your Tactics at the Door!
Are software vendors pressuring you for a decision? Threatening a compliance action? Giving you an expiration date for discounts? Throwing more and more “free” products into the offer? Don’t cave!
Software License Optimization (SLO) is the brilliant solution.
Software licensing is complex and only getting worse with the pace of change accelerating. Software providers have multiple licensing plans with many options in each plan to give customers licensing flexibility. Unfortunately, this often results in confusion and over-reliance on the provider for licensing guidance.
Software providers benefit more from this complexity than customers. Often license parameters are very technical. For example, IBM licensing is currently based on User Value Unit, Processor Value Unit or Resource Value Unit . Processor value units are per core and listed in the appropriate Processor Value Unit table depending upon whether the system is RISC, System z or x86.
The situation only gets worse when the legal, contractual and financial aspects of licensing are added. It is very difficult for organizations to find people who are experts in all the aspects of licensing and understand the intricacies of a particular software provider’s licensing model. As a result, many organizations focus on discount off of list price during negotiations and waste money on software options they don’t need or products that will never be used. Also, they agree to contract terms that increase the total cost of ownership of the software license over its lifetime. For example, many organizations do not negotiate compliance terms and conditions.
Partner with Silver Tree: Achieve substantial software cost reduction, reduce compliance risk and improve relationships with your major software vendors. Silver Tree’s team of software license optimization (SLO) professionals have in-depth knowledge of Adobe, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle licensing, delivering significant results:
• Complicated Oracle license migration: client was able to obtain a 94% discount on list license fees, a $17 million savings, while saving close to $1 million in net license fees.
• “We asked Silver Tree to help us save 40 to 50% on Microsoft licensing while maintaining the high-level of service we currently have in place. Silver Tree took an unique approach to understand our Microsoft license usage history, as well as our future plans. Using this information Silver Tree put together a strategy for Microsoft licensing that saved us over 75% annually. And, they did it in less than two months.” – CIO, large furniture manufacturer
• As a key member of team formed by a large retailer as a result of a dispute over software contracts with a large software vendor, formulated a negotiating strategy that resulted in avoiding a threatened lawsuit and in saving approximately $300,000.
• A Fortune 1000 consumer beverages company received an out of compliance by $16 million notification from Oracle. Silver Tree discovered a mistake that had resulted in higher license requirements. Equipped with this information, the client successfully worked with Oracle License Management Services to reduce the compliance findings, saving over $1.7 million in list license fees, securing a more favorable proposal and facilitating a close working relationship between the client and Oracle.
• Telecommunications giant: licensing model was undergoing a major change. In anticipation of a renewal agreement an audit and financial assessment of the current proposal and several contract terms that were in dispute. Results:
o Current agreement was not renewed by the end date requested
o Value assessment of the proposal was reduced by $7 million
o As a direct result of insight into potential market conditions over the next 12-18 months, the client reappraised its strategy of entering into multi-year renewals
Let’s Have a Conversation
Contact Silver Tree for a free initial evaluation of your licensing challenges with Adobe, IBM, Microsoft or Oracle. At the end of that conversation, we will provide an honest assessment of where we can help, a sense of the investment required and the potential ROI.