By John Emmitt
A recent article on ZDNet, by Colin Barker, says that "Many organizations can cut spending on software by as much as 30 per cent with some basic software license optimization best practices." Barker quotes Gartner Analyst Hank Marquis as saying that "it's worth making this a priority task because any spending reductions will go straight to the bottom line as gross profit." The article goes on to say that Gartner recommends three software license optimization best practices:
- Optimize configurations provided by the software publishers (aka leverage your product use rights)
- Recycle software licenses
- Use SAM (software asset management) tools
So, if your organization has been searching for some solid business justification for implementing a software asset management and license optimization program, this is it!
Flexera Software's own survey of its SAM customers, working with an independent company called TechValidate, confirms that organizations do indeed achieve significant cost savings. And they achieve costs savings in a number of different ways, including:
- Software audit cost savings
- Labor savings
- Reductions in software maintenance costs
- Hardware cost savings
- Software Reuse (This one is the same thing as identified in the article-- Recycle software licenses)
- And, the ability to negotiate more favorable software contracts
Here's a chart from our TechValidate survey:
See more TechValidate research on Software License Optimization here.