Taking Control of Software Licensing
Strategic Sourcing - Now Also for ITMany businesses are turning to strategic sourcing initiatives to lower costs and improve profits. But applying strategic sourcing to information technology is a difficult task, hampered by the lack of transparency and visibility into the enterprise-wide IT environment. Whether you want to simply negotiate a better agreement with a strategic vendor or to achieve vendor consolidation through strategic sourcing, you need current and relevant insight into IT. For example, to develop a strategic sourcing plan, you need to first understand the current technology fact base: what do you have, where is it, and how are you using it. In today's volatile software licensing environment, it is important to have this information in the terms that are relevant to licensing agreements: how much software are you using from vendor X, and what platforms is it running on? With detailed, vendor-relevant information in hand, you can then develop the sourcing plan, identify the current strategic vendors and find ways to consolidate vendors and reduce maintenance spending while cutting total costs. Once you have developed a sourcing strategy, the next step is identifying and negotiating with suppliers. Negotiating optimal software licensing agreements requires insight into current and anticipated software needs, usage, and licensing terms.
