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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)

#301

Post by greenshackle2 »

amelius wrote: post #102
Balvarez wrote: post #61

It seems to me companies should instead invest in open source alternatives. They could pay less, funding the development of open source alternatives and everyone wins. Blender is a good example of this.

Yes, commoditize your complement.

There's no reason to think most of the SaaS tools being bought are complementary to the products and services they are being used to produce.

For example, if I'm a car manufacturer using software tools for engineering, sales, inventory management, payroll, etc., the software tools are not a complement to what I sell, they are just a production cost.

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

#302

Post by jonathankoren »

I understand why the suits love a subscription based model because it meas steady revenue, and there's the good chance that you're subscription will be forgotten about, which means the easiest rent to collect, but as a software consumer, it's really hard for me to believe that the switch to subscriptions just means you stopped figuring out reasons for someone to upgrade, so now you have to take rents.

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

#303

Post by lwb »

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…

Qualtrics, a company I have worked for in the past, specializes in selling huge experience management packages to global enterprises. Deal size ranges anywhere from $10k to $1mil+ (yearly). Then there's SAP which is something like $3k per user per year. These things can seriously add up.

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

#304

Post by svartkanin »

swiley wrote: post #267
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…

MS office is probably one of them. Office 365 isn’t worth it but most people don’t seem to know that.

All companies I've worked at had dev environments that did not require any licensing. The tools used where mainly free or under the free tier (sublime, eclipse, CurcleCI, AWS...)

For larger products those will require to purchase certain usage since the workload will be higher but that's a company product cost and not per dev.

Unless one is developing MS products or is dependent on MS software I can't see how the numbers mentioned add up

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

#305

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

cercatrova wrote: post #268
stiray wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just an interesting idea, if no one wants to have employees (lets face it, they are a mess, they waste oxygen, they fart, producing CO2, are corona virus friendly, produce road accidents... and you need to pay them so they can live) maybe everyone is having wrong bussiness plan. Whole world should transform to produce only SAAS products for SAAS people as they are the only customers who will in long term still have m…

I like your first sentence, but unsarcastically. Companies should always strive to do more with fewer employees by automating them away. As for the rest of your argument, most people are not like you, as they will not want to spend time setting up their own mail server. For companies this is doubly true, as they will likely spend more money setting it up, maintaining it, and upgrading it, than the subscription actual…

Horizontal integration of business processes means a lot of external stakeholders have you by the balls.

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

#306

Post by indymike »

geogra4 wrote: post #284
swiley wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS office is probably one of them. Office 365 isn’t worth it but most people don’t seem to know that.

Right but MS has such a stranglehold that no business dare run without office. It's a shame that no one really has competition for them

I know plenty of companies that are on Google apps.

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

#307

Post by baddox »

SonicScrub wrote: post #265
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…

That number doesn't surprise me. Your quick $1000-$2000 estimate is probably accurate for a typical office worker, but the more specialized positions skew the average. I work in mechanical/aerospace engineering for a large company. A lot of the software we use is very specialized and very costly. Here's the yearly costs from the top 4 softwares I use based on a quick google search: 1) $35,000 2) $15,000 3) $10,000 4)…

Do you mean that no one else at your company uses any of those 4 softwares?

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

#308

Post by a13n »

SonicScrub wrote: post #265
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…

That number doesn't surprise me. Your quick $1000-$2000 estimate is probably accurate for a typical office worker, but the more specialized positions skew the average. I work in mechanical/aerospace engineering for a large company. A lot of the software we use is very specialized and very costly. Here's the yearly costs from the top 4 softwares I use based on a quick google search: 1) $35,000 2) $15,000 3) $10,000 4)…

That's per license, per employee? Or company-wide license fee? If the latter, you still need to divide by the total number of users of the product.

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

#309

Post by jachee »

baddox wrote: post #307
SonicScrub wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That number doesn't surprise me. Your quick $1000-$2000 estimate is probably accurate for a typical office worker, but the more specialized positions skew the average. I work in mechanical/aerospace engineering for a large company. A lot of the software we use is very specialized and very costly. Here's the yearly costs from the top 4 softwares I use based on a quick google search: 1) $35,000 2) $15,000 3) $10,000 4)…

Do you mean that no one else at your company uses any of those 4 softwares?

Not if they're per-seat licenses.

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

#310

Post by iandanforth »

NortySpock wrote: post #197
davidajackson wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should build a webpage that does this: 1. Enter salary of engineer. 2. Enter cost per engineer of product (subscription, one time, etc.). 3. Enter required minutes to make worth your time (setup per employee can be factored in). This may already exist, but if it doesn't it could be a useful tool for Saas companies. Something you could drop into emails to potential customers ("see how much you would save"). Wo…

So, a spreadsheet?

Yeah but built with React and deployed on a Gcloud kubernetes cluster.
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