Trends 2008: Applications Licensing And Pricing

Forrester interviewed 25 clients of leading enterprise applications providers and surveyed 215 business process and applications professionals about their software licensing and pricing experiences. According to these users, software licensing and pricing continues to be marred by complexity, soaring maintenance costs, and a lack of flexibility and alignment with business goals. While vendors work to find the balance that works for them and their clients, a number have made progress by simplifying the process, offering customer-focused management, and empowering clients. Forrester believes future application innovation trends like service-oriented architecture (SOA) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) will be the impetus behind a shift in how firms view apps licensing and pricing and what they demand from apps providers. In the meantime, business process and applications professionals must arm their firms to mitigate licensing pain points.