The buyer needs to be proactive to ensure a software
licence deal meets their needs, rather than the supplier's
convenience. Helen Beckett looks at how to create value and
flexibility in real-world negotiations
Software licensing remains a minefield that all users – whether
battle-weary or greenhorns – must pick their way through with care.
While IT suppliers like to trumpet the virtues of software asset
management, it can be a user fast track to under licensing. And
once users are on the back foot, suppliers can pretty much dictate
the terms of the next licence.
Seasoned negotiators encourage users first of all to get to
grips with the terms and conditions of the software licence. The
focus should be to negotiate the best possible terms and then to
concentrate on fulfilling their part of the deal.
One caution from independent advisers is to beware the new trend
for subscription licences. Traditionally, licences were bought in
perpetuity with a one-off payment. Subscription licences, by
contrast, offer no ownership, just renewal at regular
intervals.
This advice is reiterated by the Surrey Police Force, which has
just moved from a Microsoft Office of Government Commerce
Enterprise Agreement to the Home Office Master Agreement, designed
specifically for the police and criminal justice sectors.
“We buy perpetual licences,” says Russell Fowler, ICT technical
support manager. “The major disadvantage of a subscription licence
is that you never own it. As a result, you are never able to step
out of the agreement. If you want to use a particular product, you
have to continue to subscribe – you cannot take a break from the
agreement.”
And all users need to be mindful of support clauses. Within
subscription licences, support is often packaged with a “right to
use” aspect. Support needs to be measured and prompted by service
level agreements in the same way as an outsourcing contract.
“The worst mistake is to think that just because you have the
right of termination, you do not have to build in other remedies,”
says Kit Burden, partner with law firm DLA Piper Rudnick Gray
Cary.
“Using the ‘H-bomb’ is not a palatable remedy. You need to
incentivise suppliers properly to get it right the first time.”
Case study: Banking on change
Burden recently negotiated a software licence for an investment
bank that was procuring an online trading application. The rate
card price of the standard licence – £8.3m – was just the basis for
the negotiation.
An important consideration was how long the user envisaged using
the application. A warning signal for Burden was that the supplier
was offering a five-year licence while his client envisaged using
the software for eight to 12 years.
“You might have a situation where the user is happily bedded in
with the software after five years, but the supplier is able to
pull the rug out from under their feet because the licence is due
to terminate at that point. The danger is that a supplier can lock
the user in and then rack up the licensing costs.”
Burden advised the bank to pay extra to secure a “perpetual”
licence, and it agreed to pay a further £2m for this extension. “It
is vital to get a licence long enough to get the full return on
your investment,” he says.
The other concern was to provide the bank with options to own
the code or modifications, should it later prove commercially
expedient to control these. Burden renegotiated the standard
licence to gain two options.
The first option was for his client to identify functionality
that it wanted developed from the core application – spot trading,
for example – and to create an exclusive licence for this part of
the code.
An “uplift” in price, to be negotiated according to the size of
the modification, would take care of this.
The second option would be where the bank needed to take over
development of the application as a strategic move, whether to
safeguard the application’s future or to ensure commercial
confidentiality. This option requires access to source code rather
than object code.
If the bank ever wants to exercise this option, it will have to
stump up an extra £6.8m.
“For the right application, you may have to pay a substantial
sum to get the licence you want,” says Burden, although the
business benefit and peace of mind may make it worthwhile.
“For users contemplating bespoke systems where millions of
pounds will be spent on modifying a core product, not looking at
future scenarios is nothing short of criminally negligent,” he
says.
Case study: The capacity model
The pattern of server deployment in Trafford NHS Trust is
different to that in the private sector and it follows that the
trust prefers a different model of software licensing.
In the 15 years that Roger Fenton, deputy IT manager at
Trafford, has been with the trust, it has gone through three
licensing regimes for back-up software. He is responsible for
renegotiating and introducing the most recent model for licensing
back-up.
IT resources are assigned throughout the NHS on a project basis,
rather than by central provision, because of the way budget is
allocated. This has big implications for the way that software
licences need to be procured.
“We have upwards of 40 servers running various applications that
all need to be licensed and maintained,” Fenton says.
He has just moved to a new licensing regime with his back-up
supplier, Computer Associates. The health authority now pays on the
basis of total raw storage capacity rather than per server, and the
licence can be scaled up incrementally.
It is a big improvement on the previous regime, both financially
and in terms of simplifying and reducing administration.
“The price we secured was embarrassingly good,” says Fenton, who
states he saved “thousands” on the previous licensing bill of
£40,000.
Savings accrue chiefly because licensing on the basis of
capacity, rather than individual servers, better suits Trafford’s
pattern of deployment; as servers proliferated within its
project-led culture, server-based licensing incurred a financial
penalty.
This was compounded by the fact that in the per server model, CA
charges both for the software running on the central back-up
server, and for “agents” that run on the application servers that
are backed up.
Keeping track of the annual maintenance charges for the separate
agent licences was a major headache. Every additional back-up agent
that ran on the application servers had to be licensed, and the
maintenance fee renewed each year.
“Potentially, we had loads of different licences to maintain,
all expiring on different dates,” says Fenton.
In addition, the overall cost of the model had become
unpalatable. “In such an environment, each time we bought a new
server, we were talking about another £750 or more in licence
fees,” says Fenton. At the same time, server costs were falling
below the £2,000 mark, making licence costs proportionately
greater.
This licensing overhead had accumulated over time, creeping up
on the health trust, which, like other former Unix users, had no
previous experience of licensing back-up.
Before moving to Windows, Trafford had used Unix boxes, which
have back-up built-in. Each Unix server came with its own
low-capacity tape drive, and applications were accompanied by a
script for the back-up. “They were turnkey systems,” says
Fenton.
When the trust moved to Windows it initially repeated its
approach with the Unix boxes.
“We used individual tapes for each SQL server. It was a logical
extension of what we did with the Unix boxes. However, as the
number of servers and applications mushroomed, managing tapes and
back-up programs for each server became impractical.”
There are some disadvantages to the new approach. The first is
having to licence back-up in blocks of 1Tbyte.
“As you tip over into a new increment you are faced with buying
a large chunk of extra capacity that may be only partially used,”
says Fenton.
A further disadvantage is the way that storage capacity is
calculated – according to the raw capacity of the backed-up drives,
rather than the capacity actually utilised. The large disc
installed in servers may only be used nominally, while redundant
array of independent disc (Raid) storage architectures are designed
to ensure redundancy.
“Nonetheless, licensing capacity is cheaper and a lot less
hassle for us,” says Fenton.
Beware the chamber of horrors
There are certain scenarios that users should avoid at all
costs, says outsourcing broker Quantum Plus. Above all, always
remember the golden rule: there is no such thing as a standard
contract.
Seemingly innocuous “version updates”
Relatively minor updates of the “0.1” variety can incur
unadvertised changes to terms and conditions that have a
significant impact on customers. For example, a version update may
change the way that the number of users is calculated or the nature
of server licensing.
Obscure charging mechanisms
Be very sure of the supplier’s charging model for a licence. Is
it based on the number of users, servers or even processors?
Seemingly low-cost software can easily be installed in a
non-compliant way. For example, if software costs are
processor-based, and the server is a quad processor, the result is
under licensing and a big bill.
Control of media
A number of suppliers of shrink-wrapped software have clauses in
the agreement that require users to show they control the media on
which the software is distributed. Examples of control might
include a single point of contact for receipt of a disc, its safe
storage, and an approval process for signing it out. A supplier
could cite a lapse in control as breach of contract.
The outsourcing clause
Suppliers may try to insert into terms and conditions their
right to renegotiate the licence should the management of an asset
be moved to a third party. This can be invoked for an outsourcing
contract, even when the software and server remain onsite.
Suppliers may also reserve the right to charge an administration
fee to transfer the licence to the third party. Beware: the
transfer fee could run into thousands of pounds.
Enterprise licence
If you are underlicensed and on the back foot, the balance of
power shifts to the supplier, who may insist you sign up to an
enterprise licence. Such a licence may appear to be all-inclusive
and cover every eventuality, but the reality is that it will likely
be accompanied by a hefty three-year or more service and support
charge that adds no value.
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