Software asset management problems
How Businesses Waste Their Software Investments
The findings of new study serve as a wake-up call for C-level execs to implement software asset management/software license optimization solutions.
Out of Compliance Licenses
75% of enterprises said at least some percentage of their software is overused; 32% report as much as 11% or more of their software spend is the result of non-compliant use.
Wasted Entitlements
96% of respondents said that at least some of their software budgets are wasted on not fully using their entitlements—the product use rights in the software license agreement.
More Audits
65% of enterprises were audited by a software vendor within the past year, and 23% of them were audited three times or more.
Big Auditors
Respondents have been audited by all the major software vendors, including Microsoft (61%), Adobe (33%) and Oracle (30%).
Big Fees
44% of enterprises (compared to 25% in the prior year) paid $100,000 or more in true-up costs to their software vendors as a result of non-compliant software use; 20% (up from 9% the prior year) reported true-up costs of $1,000,000 or higher.
Wasted Software
93% of organizations spent money on at least some software that is underused (shelfware), and 30% said that 21% or more of their software spend is associated with shelfware.
Growing Importance
81% of organizations, up from 15% in 2015, said managing software licenses and usage is important or very important.
More Tracking
92% report proactively tracking, managing and reporting software licensing and usage today. Methods include automated commercial SAM/software license optimization solutions (34%), manual (29%) and tracking tools provided by software vendors (16%).
Managing Software Assets
Top reasons enterprises proactively manage their software licenses and use include reducing software costs/cost avoidance (74%), ensuring software license compliance/reducing audit risk/costs (71%), and reducing risk by discovering and removing unauthorized or unlicensed software from their systems (42%).
Tight Software Budgets
Nearly half (49%) of the respondents said software budgets will remain the same over the next 18 to 24 months; 19% said budgets will decrease, and 33% said they will increase.