No one seems to like licensing and businesses like licensing audits even less – and for good reason, arcane rules, uncompetitive pricing models, inflexibility, and an attitude of indifference towards the end user by software companies.
I can’t say that we love licensing (few things have been cursed as often and as loudly in the IT Partners office) but we are good at it. Three times in the last two months, we have helped new clients with large and complex licensing requirements. Large in terms of greater than $50,000 per annum cost.
We don’t have a problem with licensing because we understand it, and have surrounded ourselves with experts that we can call upon for the tricky stuff. We don’t have the problems that other firms might do, because we have systems, and we don’t let clients get into a position of being under (or over) licensed.
Best of all we save clients thousands of dollars annually through licensing effectively. We do this through really understanding a clients business. We ensure we understand what they are trying to achieve, what issues are confronting the client, and we compare their current status to their strategy.
So if you have software licensing issues call Michael or myself and let’s talk it through.
If you are a software vendor, and happen to read this blog post, you could do a lot by learning from Apple and Citrix. The lesson to take from Apple is the iPhone. Continuous feature releases throughout the life of the phone, with the cost built into the original purchase price. The lesson from Citrix? Allowing concurrent licensing of the users. That is as fair as it gets.