latest from isg

Negotiating with Oracle: Knowing the Rules to Achieve an Optimal Outcome

By John Szente

Structuring a deal with Oracle that delivers an optimal outcome requires a thorough knowledge of its products and a clear understanding of your needs.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Software Asset Management: Are You Audit Ready?

By Dave Goodman Dan Geddes Bill Huber

If one of your software vendors announced it was conducting an audit of your license usage tomorrow, how confident would you be?

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Negotiating with Microsoft: The Goliath of Software Vendors

By Louis Pellegrino

Most of us do not need more evidence of Microsoft’s power in the software market, but the fact is, its revenue makes it a formidable negotiator.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

The Ins and Outs of Contracting Oracle’s Next-Generation Offerings

By Yadu Singh

Though contracting with database software and technology giant Oracle has long been a serious challenge for enterprise IT organizations, the benefits usually outweigh the risks.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Back to the Future – Dusting Off the Old Playbook for Salesforce in Healthcare

By Bill Huber

If you’re a Healthcare provider, this may be the time to think strategically about where your Salesforce landscape may be headed.

Categories: Consulting Healthcare Software Advisory Services

Applying 2020 Lessons Learned in Time for Microsoft’s 2025 Business Milestone

By Louis Pellegrino

Microsoft has signaled that 2025 marks the end of its business transformation from a publisher of packaged software to a provider of subscription service offerings.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Is Microsoft Playing Three-Cloud Monte?

By Louis Pellegrino

Whether you love or hate Microsoft, the company has proven to be one of those providers that’s almost impossible to part with.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

The Future of Legacy Technology: Preparing for Escalating Software Costs

By Dave Goodman

Though the distributed computing model dominates nearly all of today’s enterprise IT environments, it’s hard to find an organization that doesn’t rely at least in some way on mainframe systems that were put in place many years ago.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Measuring Software Asset Management and Why It Matters

For many of the largest corporations in the world, the Software Asset Management (SAM) function is under-resourced and under-invested.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Making IT Asset Management Work the Easy Way

When IT asset management (ITAM) projects succeed, it’s because they capture and integrate data, not because of a particular ITAM tool.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

The Fallacy of Discounts in Software Negotiations

By Bill Huber

One of the most common questions enterprises ask about software spend is whether they should benchmark the discounts they receive from software publishers.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

The Microsoft Enterprise Agreement: Is it Dynamic Enough for Today’s Enterprises?

​Since the advent of Microsoft Online Services commercial offering, one of the benefits marketed by the software giant was an improvement in the way customers could pay for the service.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Software Audits: Rules of Engagement

By Megan Walling

Did you know most major software publishers actually have revenue targets directly tied to auditing their own customers?

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

The Calculus of Adding New Office 365 Functionality

By Louis Pellegrino

If you are like most large Microsoft customers, you have either started or completed your journey to the Office 365 platform.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Microsoft’s Transition from Premiere Support to Unified Support. Ouch!

By Louis Pellegrino

Over the past three years, Microsoft has been stealthily transitioning its product support model from its legacy Premiere Support to a new “modern” support model called Unified Support.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

The Microsoft Predictability Problem

By Louis Pellegrino

Microsoft, in recent years, has transformed itself from a software publisher to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, leaving its enterprise customers uncertain about product licensing and the company’s commercial sales model.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Stretching Your IT Budget at Year-End

By Bill Huber

As we enter the fourth quarter, many IT organizations are facing the end of one budget year and planning for the next.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Selecting a Cloud Platform that Meets Business Objectives

By Dave Goodman

Organizations often switch to default mode when selecting their cloud platform, basing their decision on familiarity

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

Microsoft Licensing Model Says I’m Too Big to Deal with You

By Louis Pellegrino

Now that Microsoft has crossed over the $100 billion annual sales threshold, it feels confident enough to say goodbye to the stratum of enterprise customers that license 500-2,500 users.

Categories: Consulting Software Advisory Services

SAP on the Blockchain Bandwagon

At Sapphire 2018, SAP unveiled how it has woven blockchain – along with analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) – into its “intelligent enterprise” concept.

Categories: Blockchain Consulting Software Advisory Services