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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)

#371

Post by notlukesky »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #261
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

“We’ve seen companies buy the same subscription over and over again—even within the same department,” he added. I think that's telling

The benefits and pitfalls of multiple payment approvals

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

#372

Post by annoyingnoob »

runforthehills wrote: post #229
annoyingnoob wrote: post #159

So many companies try to force you onto SaaS. Products that you previously had a perpetual license for are now SaaS only if you want to upgrade. O365 is the only SaaS platform that makes sense where I work. But we have a bunch of SaaS services because that is the only way the product is offered. I hate SaaS.

"Buying the product" means you never get updates and are stuck with legacy junk that slowly gets further and further behind. I'm with everyone else, this is incredibly rose colored. SaaS at the business level is awesome. For personal use? Okay yeah I'd probably rather own whatever version outright rather than have to keep paying--it isn't going to impact me dramatically like it does a business if it doesn't get regul…

SaaS means being forced to update like it or not. There is a lot of space between no updates and 'continuous improvement'.

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

#373

Post by topkai22 »

tialaramex wrote: post #348
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We’ve seen companies buy the same subscription over and over again—even within the same department,” he added. I think that's telling

One of the worst things I've seen at an employer was more than one SSO. That's when you know the people paying your wages are truly dysfunctional. Because of course Fiefdom A doesn't want Fiefdom B's SSO to be used by their systems, that gives the person ruling Fiefdom B power - so instead get a separate SSO, what do you mean that's missing the point? If I worked for an SSO provider I think I'd be tempted to exponten…

I’ve mainly seen that situation in post M&A environments, and while fiefdoms are often a part of the problem, untangling auth across multiple enterprise systems is really hard.

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

#374

Post by prepend »

earthshot wrote: post #360
prepend wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a big fan of sheets, but it is not Excel. Some of the functions are missing after all these years, not to mention charts and pivots. I think Google gave up on trying to compete with excel on features.

Sheets has had pivots for years. It's become very rare that Sheets doesn't have a feature I want, whereas it's become more common that I'm in Excel and wish I could use Sheets' query function.

Pivots exist, but aren’t nearly as functional.

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

#375

Post by prepend »

twojacobtwo wrote: post #365
prepend wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a big fan of sheets, but it is not Excel. Some of the functions are missing after all these years, not to mention charts and pivots. I think Google gave up on trying to compete with excel on features.

Sheets has charts and pivot tables. It definitely lacks some features of excel, but it also has some nice new additions that I love so far - e.g. Showing the return value of a formula while still editing.

Sorry, I didn’t mean that sheets doesn’t have charts. I meant that the charts in sheets are missing substantial features that have been in excel for years.

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

#376

Post by sbinthree »

I think something that isn't discussed much are the runaway effects of being a winning platform. Even something uncorrelated (as opposed to network effects driven) like Stripe eventually has the ability to outexecute companies of any size and charge monopoly profits.

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

#377

Post by nwallin »

prepend wrote: post #350
adjkant wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheets will fit a lot of excel use cases for those not doing serious heavy lifting with it. FWIW, I'm a software engineer and our IT department actually let people opt out of Microsoft office if they weren't using it to save money, and encouraging people to use Google Docs/Sheets (as most do anyways). I'm guessing a good deal of software engineers did that but there are plenty of non-engineers that probably also did…

I am a big fan of sheets, but it is not Excel. Some of the functions are missing after all these years, not to mention charts and pivots. I think Google gave up on trying to compete with excel on features.

The overwhelming majority of people who double click the Excel icon would be equally well served by sheets or localc. It's fine if you're an analyst and are more productive with Excel, but if you're the rest of us, it doesn't matter what spreadsheet app you use. For most of us, a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet and don't need anything more complicated than sum().

In most companies, it's silly to have Office installed by default for all employees. If you need it, fine, put in a request and we'll get it done.

(please note there are a few things I'm NOT saying: 1) localc or sheets are as good as Excel for all users. 2) companies should save money by never paying for Excel, even if an employee wants to use Excel. 3) all companies should follow the rule of thumb outlined in my second paragraph.)

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

#378

Post by chaosbutters314 »

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…

I'm with SonicScrub. In my last job, my yearly licenses for me and my group of about 6 were $1 million annually not including hardware. We likely heavily skewed the average workers costs since we used extremely expensive, specialized software

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

#379

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#380

Post by caseysoftware »

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…

We - at Okta - publish a report on this every year. Here's the January 2020 study: https://www.okta.com/businesses-at-work/2020

A key finding:

"Over the years, we’ve seen app adoption steadily rise, across all industries and company sizes. This year, the average number of apps per customer reached 88: that’s a 6% increase from 83 apps a year ago, and a 21% increase from 72 apps three years ago. And now 10% of our customers deploy a substantial 200 apps or more. When we look at customers that have been with Okta for more than four years, they deploy an average of 190 apps."

Odds are, a good chunk of those are free but if the average subscription cost is $10/month => $10/month * 12 months * 88 apps => $10560/year aka well within the estimate cited.

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