Auto renewal on your maintenance and support agreements need to be closely monitored. It is better that you leave the auto-renewal alone, so that you are in a better position to renegotiate each year. It’s at this point that the lack of a central repository or tracking mechanism may become really obvious because without knowing throughout the year when the renewals are coming in, it becomes difficult to budget and it can get you into trouble. It’s important to note that within agreements of Oracle, support renewals may contain their own Terms and Conditions which may alter some of the Terms and Conditions that you fought so hard to negotiate within the original ordering document. It’s really important that you factor in these support renewals and the support costs during the procurement process and scrutinize those during the support renewals. You could end up thinking that this is just a purchasing exercise of support renewal year to year when you actually may be devaluing that big investment you made.
Procurement is a tough job from any perspective. You have multiple requests at once for some kind of technology investment, which must be run through various channels, negotiated (if at all) and then implemented. We find in many cases that the job is made more difficult by a lack of policies in place. Policies are, in many cases, either not in place, not well implemented, or not being communicated.Managing procurement with vendors like Microsoft and Oracle, in some cases, will require its own dedicated person within the organization. This function requires somebody with a lot of specialty to keep up with the frequent changes within Oracle.
One easy improvement that can be made within a procurement process is to have a system in place for analyzing software and hardware contracts as they arrive. Standardized processes are also extremely helpful. In the case of companies that are the product of consolidations or mergers, each company will have different processes which are badly in need of consolidation. It is important to have a real compliance management process with definite policies and enforcement in place. To help with your internal compliance, you need to have some means of doing an internal audit on a relatively frequent basis. If you can’t manage this process internally, outsource it.
With software and hardware vendors, timing is everything in terms of negotiation. With a strict set of policies and procedures in place, your procurement department will be better prepared to respond in a timely fashion and take advantage of quarter and year-end concessions and discounts. Planning and forecasting your needs is also a vital part of this process, but a lack of policy is the most common issue with procurement, a flaw that can end up costing organizations a lot of money.
Just when you think you have everything in order, another new Microsoft release comes out and you are faced with the decision of whether or not to upgrade or just stick with what you have installed. The option of upgrading to the new Office 2010 has many organizations pondering whether or not they really need it, and can sacrifice the costs to do so, especially considering the current economic climate.
For those organizations that have Software Assurance (SA), you are in luck. You may not need to pay to upgrade as its part of your SA contract. Those that opted out of SA, or smaller businesses that are buying their software from the local Staples of Office Depot are facing a significant spend to upgrade. There is, however, a loop hole. Yes, a Microsoft loop hole! If you currently have Office 2003, you should consider upgrading to Office 2007, and then to Office 2010. Because Office 2007 offers upgrade pricing, which gives you a discount not available with Office 2010, you could save as much as $200 per installation.
If you want to upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2010, you have to buy, install, and validate a copy of Office 2007. Then you will get a free upgrade from Office 2007 to Office 2010. So, you can move from 2003 to 2010 for the discounted cost of moving from 2003 to 2007. The only downside is all the extra installation time and effort.
Two things to watch out for when considering this move on the licensing front – pay attention to each version and the licensing terms. You may need to buy a specific version of 03 and/or 07 in order to qualify for the right free upgrade. If you really want to upgrade, and save some money while doing so, make sure you have copies of Office 2007 handy, or get them while the getting is good!
While some information on Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has been made public, there are still a number of unanswered questions - one of them being about licensing. While we don’t have any more information on this, but we’re speculating that it can be a very sweet deal for the right company.
Our friends at Software Advice are running a quick survey about ERP implementation strategies to try and gauge what is the most popular and successful strategies out there. Click here to take the survey.
We encourage you to fill it out - it’s only four questions and will provide insight for all of out there with the same questions regarding ERP implementation. You can also read Houston Neals’ Guide to ERP Implementation Methodology from March 11.
Do you want or need Microsoft’s Software Assurance? A couple of basics of why or why not, and how an external party can help. Less than 15 seconds of a very unpainful “sell”, but some basic and very useful information about when Software Assurance is needed.
It is no mystery that Microsoft has been making a big push with its latest OS and emphasizing new enterprise features such as Branch Cache and Direct Access to corporations in order to sell more units. The catch to having access to some of the new Windows 7 enterprise features (such as the two I mentioned) is that Microsoft requires the purchase of Software Assurance (SA) in order to get the Enterprise Edition. The requirement may be one of the contributing factors slowing the adoption of Windows 7 in the enterprise. For whatever reason - the economy or a lack of confidence from customers who previously invested in SA and were less than impressed - we feel that many customers may refrain from purchasing SA this time around and just forgo the newest features of Windows 7. Many customers have also looked at SA as a great way to save on upgrade costs, but there is no guarantee that a new version of Windows will be available during the life of their SA contract. This, in itself, has led us to advise some of our clients to hold off on of making the investment if they don’t need the features SA brings to their organization.
It’s really a shame because the new features being offered within the Enterprise version, which are buried within the SA purchase requirement, could be very useful for many enterprises. Too bad it’s not being offered minus the SA requirement! We’ll have to wait and see how this plays out - will Microsoft remove the restrictions or face a slower adoption rate?
Auto renewal on your maintenance and support agreements need to be closely monitored. It is better that you leave the auto-renewal alone, so that you are in a better position to renegotiate each year. It’s at this point that the lack of a central repository or tracking mechanism may become really obvious because without knowing throughout the year when the renewals are coming in, it becomes difficult to budget and it can get you into trouble. It’s important to note that within agreements of Oracle, support renewals may contain their own Terms and Conditions which may alter some of the Terms and Conditions that you fought so hard to negotiate within the original ordering document. It’s really important that you factor in these support renewals and the support costs during the procurement process and scrutinize those during the support renewals. You could end up thinking that this is just a purchasing exercise of support renewal year to year when you actually may be devaluing that big investment you made. 
