In February 2023, IBM unveiled changes to its Passport Advantage Agreement terms that will become effective on May 1 for existing customers. These changes significantly affect customers' software license compliance obligations. Considering the heightened risk, it's crucial for customers to do two things.
IT vendor lock-in – should companies fight it or embrace it? Historically, IT procurement best practices have suggested companies should push back against vendor lock-in. Competition provides buy-side leverage. But the reality is IT vendor lock-in is virtually impossible to avoid in the current enterprise IT landscape – especially with mega vendors that power critical business operations.
As enterprise software costs spike, many IT procurement organizations are feeling new pressure from executive stakeholders to reassess and rein in spend. This is especially true for organizations that are also balancing transformation priorities. We’re frequently asked questions like: Where can we reduce IT spend without affecting “X” initiatives? How can we spend less without causing business or technical disruption? Are IT cost-cutting initiatives worth it in the long run?
As economic headwinds gained strength in 2022, many IT and procurement organizations mobilized to execute IT cost optimization exercises that would reduce spend, deliver hard-dollar savings, and establish a more efficient run rate for 2023 IT operations. Now, as we speed towards the second half of 2023, it’s clear these budgets are under attack from an unanticipated adversary: software license audits. And the cost risk is quite grave.
In 2022, NPI analyzed over $25 billion in IT purchases made by large enterprises. What does that data tell us about where we’re heading in 2023? Economically speaking, the trend of volatility that shaped much of 2022 is still defining the market as we enter the second quarter of 2023. During this time, most enterprise IT leaders have enacted a more conservative approach to IT spend management.
Akamai, widely known for its content delivery network (CDN) and security offerings, recently made a surprising announcement. The company is entering the world of cloud computing with the launch of Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud platform.
Recent news of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse has taken center stage and drowned out other significant moves in the market. One example is the $12.5 billion acquisition of Qualtrics by Silver Lake and CPP Investments. Qualtrics is a customer and employee experience management company that offers a cloud-based...
IT procurement leaders have always had a data issue. For years, the challenge was a lack of visibility into vendor pricing, licensing and use rights – and that’s still a major issue today. However, one could argue that leaders who are committed to strong enterprise IT procurement strategy are now drowning in data.
A change to Java licensing rules could have major cost implications for Oracle customers of all sizes. Oracle recently announced a new pricing model for Java SE subscriptions. The Employee for Java SE Universal Subscription replaces the Named User Plus Licensing and Processor licenses (user and server licensing, respectively) and is based on the customer’s number of employees.
The pressure for SAP customers to convert from ECC, its legacy ERP platform, to S/4HANA looms large in 2023. Despite the fact that mainstream support for ECC ends in 2027, most customers are struggling to make the switch. Recent data indicates 69% of ECC clients have not yet licensed S/4HANA. That’s a concerning number as the window to begin making changes grows surprisingly short.
While some anticipate PC and tablet sales to continue to decline in 2023, much of that decline is expected to stabilize by 2024. That could have something to do with growing adoption of tablet and tablet PC configurations as business-standard devices by enterprise customers. NPI data reflects this trend as we see more of our clients adopt (and refresh) these kinds of devices.
The Microsoft reseller ecosystem is large and complex – but, for many enterprise customers, resellers are an integral part of the Microsoft relationship. To better understand how the vendor does business with its largest accounts, it’s important to understand the differences between Direct and Indirect Microsoft Resellers.
It’s been an interesting year for Salesforce. For the second time in under three years, co-CEO Marc Benioff will part ways with his co-CEO. There appears to be internal strife around the company’s acquisition of Slack, the most expensive subscription software acquisition of all time. And perhaps most telling is the vendor’s revenue growth rate. According to the vendor’s recent quarterly earnings, revenue grew 14%
Microsoft is known for its stringent rules around licensing products in cloud and virtualized environments. It’s been the subject of complaint among enterprise customers as well as the crux of anticompetitive accusations in the EU. In response, Microsoft has announced more flexible licensing policies for some products over the last several months – including Microsoft Windows Server.
NPI observes a lot of mistakes in IT vendor price quotes. Over the years, these (mistakes) have ranged from inaccurate quantities and incorrect part numbers to things like “free” equipment or licensing that was never discussed. What do they all have in common? They typically benefit the vendor’s bottom line. Hand in hand with these instances are errors in tiered pricing.
When large companies ask us where they can make a meaningful impact on reducing IT spend, one area we advise them to focus on is their largest SaaS software deployments. They almost always reveal significant cost-saving opportunities. One great example is Microsoft 365. Companies are spending more on M365 than ever before for several reasons.
What steps can companies take during the SaaS contract negotiation process to improve negotiation outcomes? NPI’s SaaS cost optimization analysts share their suggestions.
As IT vendors acknowledge the complexity of customers’ digital transformation initiatives, many are engineering new products and solutions specifically designed to simplify and accelerate those projects. Enter SAP. In 2021, SAP launched RISE with SAP – or RWS for short. But like a lot of SAP offerings, it’s not easy to understand exactly what RWS is, its pros and cons, and who it’s best suited for.
It’s not uncommon for vendors to tie IT contract renewal price increases to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). But given current economic dynamics, does this really make sense?
Across the enterprise IT ecosystem, more and more vendors are passing on some of the burden of high inflationary costs to customers. In the past, a 1 to 3% rate hike was within Fair Market Value (FMV) standards in most cases. In 2022, the perception of “fair” looks more like 3 to 5% as vendors grow increasingly inflexible in their minimum price increases...
Sales teams for enterprise IT vendors have always had to be creative in order to make quotas. Meanwhile, customers are scrutinizing larger purchases as IT spend continues to climb year over year. That’s leading many to question the value of vendor’s sales propositions – including whether an Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) makes sense.
We’ve written about SaaS cost management extensively on this blog in recent months. Why? Because companies are spending more on SaaS...a lot more. Gartner estimates SaaS spend will grow by 20% in 2022, and that estimate is conservative for many enterprise customers.
NPI and Procurement Foundry recently hosted a Topics in Technology Sourcing panel on Optimizing Licensing and Cost in Large Software Estates. Procurement executives from American Airlines and ADM as well as NPI’s own software licensing experts covered a lot of territory on how IT procurement can reduce cost and improve license management across their largest software deployments.
Much has been written about the concept of cloud cost management with a lot of it centered around workload planning and clearly defining requirements. While these things certainly important, the work doesn’t stop there. NPI explores 5 often overlooked activities you should be doing to keep cloud costs in check.
Avaya, a once multi-billion dollar cloud communications and collaboration company faces new fiscal hurdles after a debt refinancing plan ran aground. Now, only five years after a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and entry back into public markets, Avaya’s financial stability is in question again as investors fume at potentially being led astray.
SaaS spending has been on the upswing for decades. But it’s only recently that we’re seeing SaaS spend overtake traditional software investments. Now is the time for companies to make sure they have the tools and practices in place to eliminate SaaS overspending.
As supply chain issues persist across the IT world, shortages have started hitting a new area: cloud services. Recent reports show that capacity issues are affecting Microsoft Azure customers globally – from Washington State to Europe and beyond. More than two dozen Azure data centers are experiencing limited server capacity, and Microsoft expects capacity to remain limited until early 2023.
There has been a lot of debate about the phasing out of on-premise software in favor of SaaS. The overall consensus is something like this – on-premise is going the way of the residential landline. Sure, it will continue to exist and some will continue to use it (more than enterprise SaaS providers would have you believe). But the overall transition to SaaS is accelerating.
A number of big tech companies are increasing their focus on healthcare, including Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and others. Another big name on the list is Microsoft. Microsoft is no stranger to investing R&D dollars in healthcare solutions, but its latest result – Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare – is certainly its most ambitious.
Economic headwinds are putting pressure on most businesses in most industries – including tech companies. For customers with large software estates from certain enterprise vendors, the effect is a bit of a double whammy. Not only are IT costs rising, but the risk of a software license compliance audit has also become significantly greater.
Many large Salesforce customers struggle to identify opportunities for cost reduction in their estate as they prepare for their renewal negotiations. Optimizing Salesforce assets is often a cross-functional collaboration exercise. But many enterprises don’t have vendor management functions to assure that procurement, IT and business...
Over the last year, Microsoft has launched a new category of product to the market – the Cloud PC. In this article, we’ll discuss what Microsoft Cloud PC is, how it works, what makes it attractive, and how to determine if it’s a fit for your organization.
For the most part, NPI’s clients have good relationships with their IT vendors. Sure, some vendors are less pleasant to do business with than others. But, by and large, there is mutual respect – customers need their IT vendors to be successful and vice versa. Every now and then, however, an IT vendor goes rogue.
NPI is often asked “How much time before the end date of our current Salesforce contract term should we begin working on the next renewal?” The answer may surprise you – especially since many Salesforce customers wait until a few months, sometimes even weeks, before the renewal date to start thinking about it.
f you’re a customer of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services, you’ve likely heard of Oracle’s Universal Credits subscription model. Oracle introduced it back in 2017 to better compete with increasingly flexible consumption and pricing options offered by IaaS and PaaS leaders like AWS.
Here’s a comment we heard recently from a NPI client executive at a Fortune 500 Health and Life Sciences company after they’d just finished a Salesforce renewal negotiation: “We go through all this pain to sign the agreement and I wake up the next morning and have no idea what I paid for.”
Last week, all eyes were on the Masters Tournament as legends and legends in the making competed for the coveted Green Jacket. But what on earth does that have to do with IT procurement? Here’s what NPI CEO Jon Winsett had to say over on LinkedIn...
Inflationary pricing, supply chain challenges and increased labor rates has made strategic IT sourcing more important than ever. Developing the right strategy is critical to protecting your IT budget and heading off any disruptions to your company’s purchasing plans.
Environmental, Social, Governance – ESG for short – has changed how many investors and companies assess risk and opportunity as they invest in and fortify supply chains. As any procurement team will tell you, these non-financial indicators have become increasingly important in recent years. Initially, ESG compliance and evaluation was a qualitative analysis focused on unearthing risks...
Whether you’re pondering a new purchase or have a renewal on the horizon, there are changes to LinkedIn Sales Navigator pricing that you should be aware of. For the uninitiated, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn several years ago – but that doesn’t mean Sales Navigator is a standard part of Microsoft’s Enterprise Agreement. To the contrary, actually...
Procurement could learn a thing or two from Inventing Anna. Not the imposter bit, of course. But something about what’s made the story so interesting to so many people. If you’ve been keeping your ear to the ground, you’ve probably noticed a handful of new terms pop up in procurement circles. One is “world-class outcomes.” It’s a world-class result as compared to peer purchases in the market. Noble for sure, and viable for many organizations. But “world-class” anything doesn’t just happen...
Late last year, Microsoft “rebranded” its Workplace Analytics product. The new product name is Microsoft Viva Insights and it aims to pick up where Workplace Analytics left off – or, depending on how you look at it, fell down. One obvious change is the pricing. There was a price reduction of about 43% with the introduction of Viva Insights. In addition to the rebranding, Microsoft has somewhat changed the messaging...
As we approach the end of Oracle’s fiscal year (May 31st), many customers may find themselves on the receiving end of a Java license audit. There appears to be a concerted effort on behalf of Oracle to increase pressure on clients to spend more on Java – or face the consequences.
There are almost always opportunities to save on an IT renewal, but it calls for a bit of forensic analysis to reveal your options. Preparation is key – and it needs to begin months before the expiration of your current term! Questions to ask and data points to collect include...
Late last December, as most folks settled into the holidays and a slow business news cycle, Oracle spiced things up. It announced the acquisition of medical-records systems provider Cerner Corp. for $28.3 billion. An Oracle Cerner acquisition was – and is – big news that deserves revisiting. Cerner is among the top EHR vendors in the world, competing with market leader Epic Systems, Allscripts and a handful of...
As the crisis in Ukraine unfolds, we’re reminded of the connectedness of the global economy and how it impacts all facets of business – including IT and the IT supply chain. How will this conflict impact IT costs and what can companies do to mitigate and prepare? NPI’s experts weigh in.
Before smartphones and text were a thing, there were pagers – a cute little box that sent alphanumeric message alerts. While pagers are (for the most part) an outdated artifact, PagerDuty has added panache and modernization to the concept. It provides a SaaS incident response platform for IT departments that has attracted customers like SAP, Zoom, Yelp and others. As its popularity has grown, PagerDuty pricing has taken some twists and turns...
New technologies like NFC and EMV chips are helping to drive many POS upgrades. Mobile can require a complete and potentially expensive change to current systems. Integrating a mPOS system that can also be used for inventory management can be a huge benefit, but also add to software costs. With a potential move to mPOS, there may still be use cases to implement for customers that want to pay in cash...
Cisco’s latest price increase is significant. While the vendor claims the hike to be an “average” of 10% across its entire portfolio, the reality is most offerings will cost 15 to 25% more. In this post, we discuss three things customers can do to offset the financial impact of these changes.
Despite customers demanding easier ways to engage and source with software providers, there are some vendors that are holding the line on the status quo. Complexity continues to rule the day for many software sourcing transactions, and the Workday renewal is an excellent example of this. Years ago, when NPI began seeing Workday renewals and new purchases on a regular basis, transactions were relatively easy to evaluate...
As the pandemic continues to dominate headlines and every aspect of our lives, the technology industry continues to adapt. Similar to manufacturing supply chains, the global supply chain for technology professional services has been impacted. We now find ourselves amid a global talent shortage due to various factors like the Great Resignation and higher demand...
Earlier this month, I wrote a blog about Microsoft’s Power BI Premium Capacity licenses, which is a good way to share dashboards and reports throughout the enterprise. This month, though, I’d like to briefly review the Power BI Premium Per User licenses. As you probably know, Power BI is a business analytics service by Microsoft and part of the Microsoft Power Platform. It aims to provide...
Overpaying for enterprise software, cloud infrastructure, hardware and IT services is all too common. Unfortunately, inconsistencies in market pricing can make it difficult for buyers to determine whether a vendor’s pricing is within fair market value range. Below, we dive into the importance of assessing fair market value pricing for enterprise IT purchases, as well as a few tips to consider before your next transaction...
Microsoft’s latest Office 365 price increase will mean higher costs for many of the vendor’s enterprise customers. If you’re wondering if the O365 price increase will impact your spend, here is what you need to know...
As adoption of enterprise-scale cloud services has become commonplace, so have the challenges associated with managing them. Decades in, the evolution is still underway with many companies adopting a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) and, more recently, the establishment of FinOps. But before we delve into what FinOps is and why it is important, let’s review...
In a crowded business intelligence solution marketplace, few solutions match the popularity (and revenue) of Microsoft’s Power BI. More than 250,000 organizations use Power BI, including 97 percent of the Fortune 500. Over the years, the offering has evolved quite a bit – most recently with the introduction of Power BI Premium capacity licenses. For many customers, these...
It’s impossible to ignore the seemingly ubiquitous nature of the cloud and the services it now renders to businesses of all sizes all over the globe. But the scale of adoption within these businesses varies greatly (along with cloud costs) – especially when it comes to the enterprise sector...
As a spend category, IT is undergoing its own transformation and pressure on procurement teams is increasing. Is it an exciting time to be in IT procurement? You bet. But the pressure and stakes are high. As the discipline undergoes changes, new resources and approaches will be critical to sourcing IT effectively...
As ServiceNow becomes more entrenched in enterprises’ IT ecosystems, its product portfolio becomes more complicated. With each biannual release comes new subscriptions with enhanced capabilities, and changes to existing offerings. The latest example is the ServiceNow ITSM Enterprise offering...
Volume purchasing programs can be an attractive way for enterprises to do business with their largest IT vendors – including the Cisco Enterprise Agreement. Large customers with significant levels of Cisco spend may be inclined to default to an EA to help streamline purchasing. But spend size, while certainly important, should not be the only determining factor...
It’s that time of year again, where IT and IT procurement teams find themselves eyeballs-deep in a flurry of software renewals. With fiscal year-ends approaching for dozens of enterprise IT vendors, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Heck, considering all of the nuances of each software renewal, it’s difficult not to.
Remember when wireless service providers like AT&T and Verizon offered unlimited plans? And then they tried to get rid of them and substitute pooled-data plans instead? Today, we’ve come full circle. Providers are re-introducing unlimited plans to the market, which gives rise to a few questions. Why did that happen?
Negotiation leverage isn’t always easy to come by in IT buying – especially for more routine “auto-pilot” transactions like renewals. A few recent purchase optimizations we helped clients with got us thinking about how we achieved savings despite low leverage. These were mainly renewal events...
Shifting clients from an on-premise license model to cloud subscriptions has been a priority for many software publishers over the last few years, and Citrix Systems is no exception. Historically, Citrix provided its desktop and application virtualization platforms through perpetual licensing and renewable maintenance. However...
Enterprise IT vendors tend to have vast partner ecosystems and aggressive strategies to monetize those relationships. One example is the “marketplace” – a single point of entry where customers can easily purchase from multiple solution providers. The marketplaces hosted by Google Cloud and AWS continue to grow and have an influential effect across the broader cloud provider landscape...
A great deal has been written on the subject of how to manage a software audit. You can find easy-to-follow, multi-step software audit management programs that align neatly with a logical workflow – all claiming to lead followers towards a successful conclusion with minimal findings and penalties levied. The issue, of course, is...
AI – along with machine learning and automation – has been a part of the enterprise IT lexicon for some time. However, recent innovations and tailwinds from the pandemic have accelerated their adoption. That’s led to greater focus on cost control. Many companies are looking for ways to keep AI pricing and costs in check as they embark on new AI-related projects and expand those that are delivering value...
ERP implementations remain one of the most complex and expensive IT projects for large enterprises. A recent report from Software Path found the average budget per user for an ERP project to be $8,265. Other data suggests ERP implementation costs for large enterprises start at $1M to $10M and up to 200 percent of license fees, and go up from there.
Project Portfolio Management or PPM software has always been a mainstay of enterprise IT. Interestingly, pricing for these solutions is on the rise according to pricing data NPI tracks across clients of that are $1 billion or more in turnover. It seems what was once a minor spend concern is steadily becoming a major recurring annual investment in many cases...
As companies adapt their IT ecosystems to changing business requirements, the cost of change is becoming harder to gauge. More specifically, it’s becoming harder to determine if companies are paying a fair price for these changes. It’s worth revisiting certain IT budgeting best practices that govern this aspect of IT sourcing...
Several vendors selling in today’s marketplace would have buyers believe that “the quote” has gone the way of the dinosaur, or at the very least is heading towards extinction. But the IT vendor quote is far from dead. In fact, it’s never been more important...
If you’re a Salesforce customer, there is a good chance you will be renewing your agreement with the vendor within the next six months. That makes now an ideal time to strategize how you can save on your Salesforce renewal – a solid strategy is most certainly required...
Our enterprise clients often ask how much weight to put on IT service level agreements when sourcing a new supplier or service. This is never an easy question to answer and largely depends on how business-critical the service is, or the goal of the SLA in question. Enterprise IT ecosystems are vast and the criticality of one IT vendor versus the next varies – a network provider or...
As ServiceNow continues to permeate enterprise IT ecosystems of all sizes, the relatively recent introduction of the vendor’s Enterprise Platform is beginning take hold. Customers familiar with the Salesforce Enterprise License Agreement (SELA) will find similarities in how the ServiceNow Enterprise Platform purchase operates.
Between inflation concerns and pricing pressure caused by ongoing shortages of computer chips and other key components, many anticipate PC costs will rise among the big three OEMs: Dell, HP and Lenovo. Forecasting price changes is tricky business, even in categories where demand is clearly outpacing supply.
The frequency of headline-grabbing cyberattacks is hard to ignore these days. Enterprise IT security teams and CISOs find themselves under increased pressure to ensure systems are safe – especially email, which remains one of the most common ways hackers infect IT environments.
The global data loss prevention software market is hotter than ever, thanks to shifts in how and where workers access corporate data and the ever-present push to the cloud. Predicted to grow at a CAGR of 19 percent, analysts estimate the market will reach $7 billion by 2027. Amid recent disruption, concerns about information security have grown as the number of employees working remotely has increased.
One factor that contributes to the complexity of SAM (Software Asset Management) is that challenges vary from one software category to the next. A clear example is HCM software (Human Capital Management). Due to the sensitive nature of the information HR teams manage, the systems and processes that support this function are isolated to ensure proper protections are enforced.
As the enterprise SaaS segment continues its meteoric growth, organizations are facing an increasingly complex challenge. How can they effectively manage compliance and license assets in software estates comprised of both on-premise and SaaS licenses? Perhaps no software publisher sums up this challenge better than Adobe...
Drastic changes in how and where workforces are working have naturally affected how enterprises consume managed print services – and not always as expected. While the shift to digital has caused many companies to consume less, some businesses that utilize centralized multi-function devices (MFDs) are experiencing increased consumption volumes.
Last year, we saw many vendors experimenting with newer pricing models to meet shifting customer demands. At the same time, many enterprises are experiencing spikes in IT security-related incidents. The confluence...
Most enterprise Microsoft customers are familiar with true-ups, but what about the inverse? Is a Microsoft true-down even an option? As is usually the case with Microsoft, the truth is in the fine print and the confusion in the grey area...
When negotiating IT deals, vendors typically lay out several objections to lowering costs. These objections will have you believe it’s impossible for the vendor to decrease pricing beyond any initial concessions. But is that really the case? How can enterprise IT buyers meet these objections head-on during vendor negotiations?
It’s hard to remember life before web content management system software as we know it today. For starters, the web itself served a different purpose. Most websites were fairly static – basically online brochures that required a technical knowledge of programming to create and update.
Quebec, the newest ServiceNow release, officially kicked off in mid-March 2021. In the months since the release, we’ve made a few observations worth sharing. First, for those unfamiliar with ServiceNow releases, each is named in alphabetical order after major international cities, i.e., Jakarta, Kingston, London, Madrid, New York, Orlando, Paris, and now Quebec. It is worth noting the release name is not explicitly detailed in documents.
Like a lot of IT purchasing events, the VMware ELA renewal has grown more complicated over the last few years. This is due in part to VMware’s ever-expanding list of offerings – a byproduct of numerous acquisitions like Pivotal and Carbon Black, and the introduction of more cloud-based solutions. As a result, today’s VMware ELAs comprise more “stuff.”
When it comes to Adobe for enterprise customers, concessions can be hard to come by during negotiations. But is the tide turning? Perhaps. Clients regularly submit Adobe purchases to NPI for price benchmark analysis. In fact, in the first quarter of 2021, Adobe snagged the number three spot in our top ten list of vendors submitted for analysis (ranked by first year customer spend). It’s no secret Adobe has the most...
Changes in IT spending patterns in 2020 didn’t dampen the overall performance of the IT sector, but did change vendor behavior in certain categories. Reprioritization of customers’ IT budgets meant greater scrutiny of spend. One area where NPI noticed an increase in analysis of spend was networking and network security hardware and software, for both new investments and the pursuit...
If your company is in the construction, manufacturing or engineering industry, there is a good chance you are spending quite a bit on Autodesk licensing. Autodesk provides PC software and multimedia tools designed to aid in architectural and mechanical design, as well as geographic information systems (GIS) and mapping.
Microsoft recently expanded the rights for Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server. For customers not familiar with Azure Hybrid Benefit, it’s a licensing benefit that allows you to use your on-premises Software Assurance-enabled Windows Server and SQL Server licenses on Azure. The cost benefits are attractive to customers and it’s just one more way Microsoft is trying to convince customers to run their software on Azure.
In 2019, Deloitte published a blueprint for a forthcoming transformation of the healthcare industry. In it, they claimed “health in 2040 will be a world apart from what we have now.” Little did they know that events in 2020 would drastically accelerate this transformation, accompanied by a burst of innovation in healthcare IT.
Back in the day I used to tell clients that Microsoft didn’t really care who owned the hardware – as long as the product was being used for the exclusive benefit of the licensed customer. With the advent of virtual desktops being hosted at Amazon, Microsoft has changed its tune somewhat. In October of 2019, Microsoft quietly changed some of its...
While many office environments have closed during the global health crisis, warehouses are one area of the business that have seen physical activity skyrocket. The explosion in ecommerce has driven new investments in warehouse infrastructure, including IT, and has put a spotlight on one area in particular – the warehouse PC purchase. Traditional PC buying...
TIBCO is one of those software vendors where spend is almost always large for the enterprise customer. If you’re using TIBCO, chances are you’re paying a lot of money. It is not uncommon to see a $100M+ list price on TIBCO deals. Thankfully, the vendor will offer substantial discounting to get their pricing into a...
Oracle offers enterprises many licensing options for its database products. Choosing the right license type for your technical, user and budgetary requirements can be challenging to say the least. This has led many customers to overbuy and overspend on Oracle licensing as well as unintentionally expose their Oracle software estates to compliance risk. Here are...
One thing that makes it difficult to navigate a software license audit is that the process varies by vendor. At an atmospheric level, the process may be seem straightforward enough (receive a formal notification, share data, etc.), but it’s the nuances that count. And the nuances of the SAP audit process make it stand out....
By now, we’re all familiar with the notion of pandemic discounts. The question for many is – should you still be asking for them? Pandemic discounts for IT purchases emerged last year as both vendors and their customers experienced massive disruption. Companies immediately began seeking deeper discounts from their vendors in the early days of...
Reprioritization of IT spend has many business leaders setting new objectives for telecom cost reduction. That’s understandable given the proliferation of telecom overspend in the enterprise. NPI’s experience indicates a significant majority of business pay too much for wireless, wireline and network spend. For most, the savings opportunity is material – seven figures in some...
Just like Microsoft’s pricing and licensing, Microsoft negotiation tactics have evolved over the years. One example is timing, specifically how to leverage Microsoft’s fiscal year-end (June 30). In the past, enterprises were advised to wait and negotiate their agreements closer to Microsoft’s quarter- or year-end. That’s not the case today. Microsoft’s fiscal third and fourth...
The data visualization space continues to heat up as enterprises demand more information visualization, analytics, and business intelligence tools. The global market, valued at $8.85B in 2019, is projected to reach $19.2B by 2027. The competitive landscape is also changing as established enterprise software vendors acquire new capabilities (e.g. Salesforce’s acquisition of Tableau in 2019) and...