By Steve Beards, VP APAC, Flexera Software
Flexera Software’s most recent report, The State of the (Software) Estate: Waste Is Running Rampant in Enterprises, reveals that there is an alarming number of businesses that are wasting a significant amount of their enterprise software budget on “shelfware”, purchasing more software than is actually needed. A staggering 93 percent of organisations report spending money on at least some software that is shelfware and 30 percent of respondents said that at least one fifth (20%) of their software spend is associated with shelfware.
In addition, 75 percent of enterprises say that at least some percentage of their software is out of compliance with their license agreements. Organisations are more often beginning to feel the sting of software license audits and true-up fees – fees that can exceed six and seven figures. Compared to only 25 percent the prior year, 44 percent of enterprises said they paid $100 000 or more in software audit true-up costs to their software vendors as a result of being out of license compliance. (See chart below).
Mars Inc. recently endured a software audit with Oracle for which the company responded with a staggering 233,089 pages of documentation! In light of these sorts of audit activities, why aren’t organisations taking a more proactive approach with their software asset management programs? Unfortunately, there are a number of complexities in managing the software licensing landscape – there’s the sheer number of contracts to manage, different types of licenses to administer, different rules from different vendors, and the dynamic nature of today’s virtualized IT environments—including both on-premises and cloud. Even with all of this complexity, many organisations are still tracking and managing their licensing information manually.
However, there is an increase in awareness as enterprises are recognising the need for a solution to manage their software assets to reduce ongoing costs and minimize license compliance risk. Whether they are using manual methods or automated commercial Software Asset Management/Software License Optimisation solutions, 81 percent of enterprises said managing software licenses and usage is important or very important. Software License Optimisation solutions can be leveraged for eliminating unused or unauthorised software, optimizing software costs, and providing a strong defence against those painful software license audits.