SAP Offers its Customers a Choice, Challenging Companies to Gain a Greater Understanding of their SAP License Usage
The blogosphere is buzzing over SAP’s announcement to reintroduce its Standard Support model and offer its customers a choice between two tiers of support service.
Amy Konary, Research Director for Software Pricing and Licensing at IDC, and Ray Wang, a Partner for Enterprise Strategy at Altimeter Group and the author of the enterprise software blog A Software Insider’s Point of View, recently posted interesting analyses of these changes.
Both applaud SAP for listening to their customers and recognise that this announcement represents a decisive shift of power in the software industry from vendors to customers.
Ray provides SAP customers a helpful decision matrix and points out that if an organisation anticipates expanding their use of SAP, now is the time to renegotiate their contract and address shelfware issues.
But in my experience, many organisations don’t really understand how their SAP applications are actually being used. Without insight into SAP license usage, how can anyone accurately identify shelfware or compliance risks?
I encourage those that are turning their attention to their SAP investments to take a closer look at how their organisation is actually using their licenses and take that information into account when considering their support options. Only by asking this question on a more ongoing basis can organisations guarantee that they’re only buying the software they really need and using all the applications they already have in 2010 and beyond.
What do you think of SAP’s support announcement? How does this impact your software budget plans in the future? How do you measure your SAP license usage today?
