Mike AustinFounder & CEO, Metrixdata 360 Inc. · Mike Austin | Helping enterprises take control of software costs through data, strategy, and relentless execution

Unlocking Success: Navigating the Maze of Software Licensing

Name: Unlocking Success: Navigating the Maze of Software Licensing
Uploaded: 2024-02-20T05:00:11+00:00
Duration: 1 min 7 s
Channel: Mike Austin
Description: Mike Austin explains practical steps for navigating software licensing: understand license types (perpetual vs subscription), license metrics…

20 Feb 2024 · 1 min

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1:07

Mike Austin explains practical steps for navigating software licensing: understand license types (perpetual vs subscription), license metrics (device-based, user-based, PVU), and review deployment data to map actual usage. He cites an IBM PVU example where user reports informed a potential switch to named-user licensing in a dev environment. He also emphasizes checking contracting vehicles (volume licensing, online purchases, EA, CSP) because rights may differ, and advocates a data-driven ("Moneyball") approach to win compliance audits and negotiations.

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It's all kind of like a cycle, right? You have to understand the license type, right? So is it perpetual? Is it subscription? What's the license metric? Is it device based, user based? What happens if I install it on a server? That sort of stuff. I have to be able to go out and look at our deployment data if we have it out there today. So if I go back to my IBM example that we've been talking about, we went and looked at PVU based. We went and looked at, even though it's not deployment data, it should have deployment data. But you know, we went to look at users and we ran user reports on the product to figure out who was using it so that we could look at what if we changed the PBO in that dev environment to named users because there were so few users over there? Then I have to look at my contracting vehicle. Am I buying it through volume licensing? Am I buying it online? I might have different rights. Am I buying it through an EA or CSP program? Because I may have different rights. And then I'm going to Moneyball use data and I'm going to play to win, right? And this is how you win compliance audits and negotiations.