Most organisations are unnecessarily wasting significant portions of their enterprise software budget, according to the tenth annual 2016 Key Trends in Software Pricing and Licensing report commissioned by Flexera Software.
The US-based software company revealed that 75 per cent of enterprises reported being out of compliance with their license agreements and 65 per cent faced a vendor software license compliance audit within the past year.
Survey respondents reported that they had been audited by all major software vendors including Microsoft (61 per cent), Adobe (33 per cent) and Oracle (30 per cent).
Additionally, 44 per cent of enterprises, compared to only 25 per cent the prior year, claimed they paid $100,000 or more in true-up costs to their vendors as a result of non-compliant software use.
Constellation Research founder and principal analyst, Ray Wang, said the software license landscape is complex due to the sheer number of contracts to manage, the different types of licenses that must be administered, the different rules adopted by different vendors and the fact that many organisations track their licensing information manually.
“Organisations should focus on continual software license compliance to reduce software audit risk and on fully utilising the product use rights they’ve negotiated in their contracts to reduce shelfware.”
Despite painting a shocking picture of the waste many organisations experience today, the report revealed optimism in that organisations are increasingly gaining awareness of the problem and looking for solutions.
Flexera Software vice president of product management, Ed Rossi, said to combat the wastage, organisations can leverage Software License Optimisation solutions such as inventorying their software estates for the first time, eliminating unused or unauthorised software from their networks or successfully defending themselves in a software audit.
