So I’m sitting at my desk buried in work one day last week. As an aside, it appears that my writings on SaaS have sparked some interest and so I have been putting together some SaaS agreements for a couple of new clients. My email alert lets me know that an email has just arrived. It is an email from R. Ray Wang, Vice President of Forrester Research Inc. I have been reading a lot of Wang’s writings and research and have been quite impressed to say the least. I have even Blogged on some of his writings. He had a few kind words to say about my Blog and then he attached the latest update to the Enterprise Software Licensee’s Bill of Rights. I promised him that I would read this latest research work and mentioned in my email reply that it would probably be a treasure trove of vital and current information. Well I did read it and my comment hit that nail on the head. As a practitioner for over 20 years, with the last 10 years concentrated in this crazy world we call software licensing, this is a must read. As a Licensee, whether prospective or a veteran of ERP negotiations, perhaps a higher standard is in order, such as mandatory reading material. Here are some highlights from this latest work as detailed by R. Ray Wang:
- Surveyed 71 vendors and 101 end users.
- Built best practices from personal experience of 1000 contract strategy interactions.
- Resulted in the inclusion of 11 new rights that support new deployment options, cost savings, client best practices, and vendor lock in avoidance.
- Suggested seven simple steps to successfully negotiating enterprise software contract.
Of course reproduction of this research work is strictly prohibited. Regardless of the prohibition, space constraints in this Blog prevent me from adequately commenting on all the salient points. I do not think Wang or Forrester would mind if I whetted your appetite the best way I know how – with Wang’s own words in the Executive Summary.
For Business Process & Applications Professionals
Executive Summary
July 7, 2009
An Enterprise Software Licensee’s Bill Of Rights, V2
Forrester Redefines 47 Basic Rights That Licensees Should Expect From Vendors
This is the 10th document in the “Building A Long-Term Apps Strategy” series.
by R “Ray” Wang
with Paul D. Hamerman, Andrew Magarie, and Ralph Vitti
“Of all the assets that an enterprise acquires, enterprise software brings with it the most unusual, onerous, and restrictive set of constraints. In most cases, licensees may not resell, reuse, or share their license. Licensees often encounter numerous grievances across the software ownership life cycle from selection to implementation, utilization, maintenance, and retirement. Poor economic conditions have kept vendors from raising prices for now; however, rapid vendor consolidation has eliminated choice and customer leverage in the market. Upon economic recovery, enterprises can expect price increases in software categories where only a handful of solution providers compete. Fortunately, advances in new deployment options (e.g., software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, cloud computing, managed services, and virtualization) may slowly shift the pendulum in favor of the customer. Forrester’s updates to its 2006 Enterprise Software Licensee Bill Of Rights (LBoR) reflect these new best practices from more than 1,000 interactions. CIOs, business process and apps professionals, enterprise architects, and procurement experts should immediately review and incorporate these best practices into their vendor relationships, contract strategies, and packaged apps strategies.”
For information on hard-copy or electronic reprints, contact Client Support.
R. Ray Wang’s Blog is A Software Insider’s Point of View.
