Articles & Reviews

Although high-value applications, such as those offered by IBM, Microsoft, AutoDesk, Oracle, and SAP are more important than ever, many enterprises today face tight software budgets. Fortunately, a new set of tools and best practices, Enterprise License Optimisation (ELO) can help companies stretch their software budgets. Read more of this Enterprise License Optimisation article.

Existing licenses and future purchases need to be planned and controlled correctly. This applies to SAP user licenses and purchased functionality like portals or indirect usage. Costs have to be justified internally and charged back to departments or affiliates. FlexNet Manager for SAP Business Suite collects all necessary data from all relevant SAP systems and brings transparency to SAP usage. This increases security for internal audits and makes consumption based charge back possible. The article describes the respective needs of SAP customers and shows how FlexNet Manager for SAP Business Suite can ease everyday work.

License management is no longer nice to have, but now standard in every company. The software inventory must be documented and monitored and the use of each license must get tracked - for external and internal documentation. At any time compliance must be ensured and for reasons of internal cost allocation and reporting, a company needs transparency about which license is used in what division by what person.

The adoption of Application Virtualization, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and the availability of Windows 7 create many new and interesting possibilities for the delivery of applications and desktops. Many organizations are on the threshold of a new or updated workplace concept.

Software-as-a-service, virtualization, multicore and "the cloud" - not to mention the worst economic climate since the 1920s - have changed the way businesses deploy the applications they use. They want to pay as they go and eliminate the "shelfware" problem by licensing only what they need when they need it.

If your organization is like most, you're caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to software licenses. Your teams shout "more, more!" while your budget screams "less, less!"

Sick of overpaying for features they don't need or use, enterprise customers are eager for software vendors to enable pay-per-use models that better align cost with consumption, according to IDC Corp.

The high cost of ownership and changing requirements drive SAP users to seek optimization solutions. As users await SAP to regain its mojo . . . and implement it's "Voice of the Customer" strategy in 2010, users must continue to reduce their cost of ownership and complexity. In addition, rapidly changing business requirements require some users to seek SaaS alternatives, additional point solutions, and extensions.

Wang ranks Flexera Software as one of the key software license optimization vendors for SAP.