Its seems that software licensing has been the hearts and minds of many as Forrester rolls out its reporter on application licensing and pricing and Microsoft launches a licensing quiz.
• Forrester points out is 29% of a company’s total IT budget will be spent on software-related costs in 2008 including on software maintenance fees – around 30% of the budget – according to Forrester’s “Software Licensing and Pricing” report. In the most recent “Trends 2008: Applications Licensing and Pricing” report by Forrester’s Ray Wang and Elisse Gaynor, Forrester believes future application innovation trends like service-oriented architecture (SOA) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) will be the impetus behind a shift in how firms view apps licensing and pricing and what they demand from apps providers. They warn “In the meantime, business process and applications professionals must arm their firms to mitigate licensing pain points.”
• Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is holding a contest for its channel partners, challenging them to see how much they know about the complex world of software licensing agreements (SLA). The Microsoft Licensing Quiz (who would have thought?) gives a series of multiple choice questions. Do you dare to take the challenge?
In the News This Week
This week’s software licensing news has been dominated by the message that software licensing is just too complex:
• CIO Magazine Software Licensing and Pricing Is Still Too Complex and Costly
• Information Week Open Source Licensing Auditing Tools Still Need Someone Knowledgeable Behind the Wheel
• InfoWorld Report finds licensing dissatisfaction