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Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

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Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#251

Post by lvs »

ckdarby wrote: post #234
XCSme wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the option of buying self-hosted products and installing them on your own server. The setup time is usually the same, but you only pay $5/mo for the server and maybe $100 one time for the product, instead of paying $100/mo for the service. This is also multiplied by X, where X is the number of subscriptions you have.

No. Please do not suggest this ever. Every company I've worked at and that has gone with self-hosted products have lost more money than paying the subscription. Self-hosted nearly never gets upgraded because there's no budget and it can always be cut from the budget because it'll keep functioning. Corp IT who usually get stuck managing these become the gatekeepers. They have nearly zero incentive to upgrade because t…

We self-host everything and have refused requests to update to subscription products. Our systems are our responsibility, so outsourcing to a SaaS that will die or get hacked tomorrow is enormous unquantifiable risk compared to the little opportunity costs of self-hosting.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#252

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #166
humblebee wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC for Slack was one that happened at a company I worked at.

There were still internal costs related to running IRC though, assuming you weren't paying some provider to do it for you... not large internal costs, but I don't think on a radically different scale from Slack considering that you could also view a Slack subscription as covering a client with a lot more features than a typical IRC setup (sure you could run a web client, bouncers, services, but that's all increasing…

I'm not sure you grasp the absurdly low cost of running an IRC server even with the things you mention. You could probably support a nation-wide enterprise on a Raspberry Pi.

Bonus, unlike SaaS, you have complete control over the damned thing. New "features" won't suddenly get added to your tools that break your workflow, you can add new features if you need them without begging some vendor to whom you are a tiny insignificant nobody, etc.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#253

Post by runako »

freepor wrote: post #45
runako wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the fully-loaded cost of an employee goes beyond the cash compensation. But even so, the average salary in the US is Companies are spending far less than $200k/employee all-in. So to slightly rephrase the OP's question: > Do people really believe that $100k is a normal salary?

Yes but companies that are spending $60K on an employee aren’t spending $10K on their SaaS.

I won't quibble too much with the precision of the $10k number, which will vary widely.

But it's pretty obvious that a basic "customer support" combo like Office 365 + Okta + Zendesk + Intercom + Slack + Zenefits starts to add up to a meaningful percentage of the employee's take-home compensation. (Remember these are positions where $20/hr is a good rate.) And remember, the comparison figure for managers over 50 is roughly $0, which approximates the spend on these functions as far back ago as 2008.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#254

Post by PopeDotNinja »

crazygringo wrote: post #247

Look, either it's worth it or it's not. Costs may be soaring, but companies wouldn't be buying them if they weren't providing more value than they cost. But: > enterprise companies are spending an average of more than $10,000 per employee per year on software Sorry but I can't wrap my head around this. Is that really accurate? Between Office and cloud and HR/payroll and a few other tools I can imagine $1,000 /year. A…

> but companies wouldn't be buying them if they weren't providing more value than they cost

Companies do stupid shit all the time. It only takes one person with authority to spend money to sign up for a service. Personally I've seen many software subscriptions that are complete garbage.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#255

Post by kube-system »

ckdarby wrote: post #234
XCSme wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the option of buying self-hosted products and installing them on your own server. The setup time is usually the same, but you only pay $5/mo for the server and maybe $100 one time for the product, instead of paying $100/mo for the service. This is also multiplied by X, where X is the number of subscriptions you have.

No. Please do not suggest this ever. Every company I've worked at and that has gone with self-hosted products have lost more money than paying the subscription. Self-hosted nearly never gets upgraded because there's no budget and it can always be cut from the budget because it'll keep functioning. Corp IT who usually get stuck managing these become the gatekeepers. They have nearly zero incentive to upgrade because t…

I don't think either absolute is the answer. The decision to outsource anything often depends on a particular company's operational strengths/efficiencies.

Maybe it makes sense for a software company to self-host some software, but they might hire a paving company to pave their parking lot. Likewise, it might make sense for that paving company to pave their own parking lot, but use SaaS software.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#256

Post by giarc »

davidajackson wrote: post #206
giarc wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should just be able to do that in your head.

It's not for you, it's for execs on the fence. Visually seeing potential savings would probably drive higher conversions, just a guess.

I don't think the problem is people at the executive level. It's that all kinds of teams across the org are paying for Saas products and it adds up over time. The other problem is that 15 teams might be paying for small group Slack (insert Saas here) licenses when they should be on a single corporate plan. Ironically I believe there is a startup that looks at accounting and located duplicate licenses.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#257

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

I think this problem must be just for enterprise software, where there is huge lock in. I'm sure for nearly every super expensive subscription out there, there are countless fewer cost competing SaaS that are being completely ignored because the costs of switching is simply too high.

But, I'm really surprised to see them complaining about it and labeling it as a "problem". I've always though that most software companies are incredibly insensitive to cost and that cost almost never matters. That has been the narrative for a long time

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#258

Post by fishnchips »

cosmodisk wrote: post #223
fishnchips wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immediately made me think of Jira.

Alternatives?

Depends on the context, I guess. I'm generally more comfortable with lightweight things - like GitHub projects for software and Trello for everything else.

Re: Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)

#259

Post by smileysteve »

XCSme wrote: post #209
robbiemitchell wrote: post #179

You know what costs way more than SaaS? Hiring, managing, and losing people. Leveraging high-quality people with tooling, both for individual functions and for company-wide process, is a no-brainer.

There is also the option of buying self-hosted products and installing them on your own server. The setup time is usually the same, but you only pay $5/mo for the server and maybe $100 one time for the product, instead of paying $100/mo for the service. This is also multiplied by X, where X is the number of subscriptions you have.

The cost of insourcing a SaaS type product is that, when it's broken, you have typically 1 person or small team; and that 1 person is typically responsible for other SaaS apps that may fail at the same time.

Setup time may be similar; but if something goes wrong, the cost is a loss of whatever other project that person is working on to fix it (+ the mental overhead of preparing to handle fixes)

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