Businesses can minimize software costs by 30 percent

Businesses can cut software costs by 30 percent if they stick to software management best practices, Gartner has announced -- research director Hank Marquis says potential savings are just "too large to ignore". Companies will spend $332 billion on it in 2016, so yes, it is a pretty big deal.

There are three best practices organizations can use to achieve these savings: optimizing software configurations, recycling licenses and using software asset management (SAM) tools.

"Automated software license optimization is a relatively new discipline and most organizations are at lower levels of maturity", says Marquis. "The variety of license entitlements also makes it tough for IT leaders to spot savings, especially in environments with many software publishers and titles. But it’s worth pursuing, as spending reductions contribute directly to the bottom line as gross profit".

The default software configuration, the one most organizations usually use, is also the most expensive, Gartner says. This is also where organizations have the best chances of cutting costs.

"Such changes appear simple in hindsight, but they are not obvious, and your savings could be in the millions of dollars", says Marquis.

By recycling software licenses, organizations avoid having to buy new licenses, which is a cheaper alternative. Finally, by using SAM tools, organizations can automate, accelerate and improve manual processes of optimizing complex licenses.

The full report, titled "Cut Software Spending Safely With SAM", can be found on this link.

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