Dr Kevin McIsaac recently met with a client who had managed to knock the price of Oracle licences down from almost $1 million to just $200,000 through intense negotiations and contract tweaking. While impressed with his client's killer instincts, McIsaac reckoned there was scope to get the price down even further - perhaps as low as $60,000 or $70,000 - just by going with the Standard, rather than the Enterprise Edition. He recommended as much.
"[The client] said: Â'You're a bit ruthless aren't you?' And I said: Â'Not at all. With Oracle you've got to play to win. You've got to be ruthless'," Meta Group's program director server infrastructure strategies says.
Strangely enough, it was soon after that that Oracle apparently discovered a mistake. It was profoundly sorry, but it had failed to take into account that the client wanted a fail-over cluster. That meant it would have to license both machines. Suddenly the vendor's hand was out for an extra $100,000.
"So the price went up considerably, and then the guy came to me and said: Â'Now I know why you were always, constantly, ruthlessly hounding away about how to knock money off of Oracle'," McIsaac, an Oracle specialist, says. (Not that we're picking on Oracle: it is just that McIsaac says they are among the industry's best negotiators, and that is, after all, their job. He appreciates them for it.)Robert Neely also has clients who are being squeezed by software vendors. The partner at legal firm Minter Ellison says a couple of his clients are selling off a part of the business and want to separate out their software licences so that both parties can use them. He reports the vendor is insisting it has the right to charge the parts of the business being sold a completely new licence fee. Neely reckons he'll win that battle for his clients in the end, but says the whole conflict could have been avoided had the initial contract contained provisions for such an eventuality.
"We've got many instances where companies are acquired by another company or acquire another company and there needs to be a consent built into the licence so that that doesn't trigger any renegotiation with the licensee," Neely says. "If you've dealt with it properly in the licence in the first place, it's much harder for a vendor then to take a position which is unfavourable."
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Ticked Off at Tick the Box Mentality 04 February, 2008 13:01:15
Does your executive search firm know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?Does your executive search firm know its MIS managers from its elbow? Does it even know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?
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Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44
Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storageAdobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage.
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. - White PaperYour organisation may well have devised and implemented an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) some time ago in order to guard against the risks of inappropriate use of computer systems by your workers, but are you confident that your AUP remains 'fit for purpose'? Read on to discover how you can enhance the effectiveness of your AUP.
- White PaperView this webcast and discover the drivers for changing network design practices, why many organisations are changing their approach to network architecture and how enterprises should be moving forward with open architecture multi-vendor network solutions. Register now and learn how your business can maximize the business value of the enterprise network.
- White PaperJoin industry expert Bob Spurzem and Chuck Arconi of Fox Hollow to discover how to reduce Exchange total storage and keep it at a manageable level. Learn how Exchange storage growth can be contained without sacrificing security and accessibility.
Discover how SOA can create smarter outcomes for your business.
Attend and learn:
- How SOA is helping leading companies to become more agile
- Where you should be applying SOA processes in your company
- The top SOA implementation mistakes to avoid
Click here for more information.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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Chris Hoff on Virtualization and Cloud Computing 20 November, 2008 10:55:00
Chris Hoff, chief security architect for the systems and technology division at Unisys and an advisor on the Skybox Security customer advisory board, is one of the biggest critics of virtualization security out there. Not because it isn't important - but rather because it is vital and needs to mature rapidly. - +
Cybersecurity is focus of new start-up incubator 20 November, 2008 07:19:00
Texas uni announces the Institute for Cyber Security.The University of Texas at San Antonio Tuesday announced a technology incubator aimed at fostering IT security-based start-ups within the state. - +
Dilip Sarangan on Physical Security M&A 20 November, 2008 11:18:00
Dilip Sarangan tracks physical security companies for Frost & Sullivan. He expects the industry's "need to have" products to weather the economic storm well, with the big players (now including IBM and Cisco) looking for value-priced acquisitions. - +
International Challenges in PCI Security 20 November, 2008 09:15:00
In a country that's seen many regulatory compliance challenges this decade, the headaches of PCI security tend to be analyzed from a largely American perspective. - +
PCI council sharpens oversight of security auditors 19 November, 2008 10:53:00
Quality assurance plan targets security assessors and scanning vendorsThe PCI Security Standards Council Monday unveiled a plan to sharpen oversight of the hundreds of security-service providers now authorized to evaluate merchant networks under the organization's Payment Card Industry data standards.
Vignette Announces 2008 Excellence Awards 21 November, 2008 10:50:00
PGP and Ponemon Institute Unveil Inaugural Australian Data Breach Study 2008 20 November, 2008 17:34:00
Symantec Cloud Services Transform Data Centre Operations Through Proactive Management 20 November, 2008 12:06:00
Verizon Business Offers Tips to Building a Successful Unified Communications and Collaboration Plan 20 November, 2008 12:04:00
AARNet Brings 4K Digital Cinema to Australia: First 4K HD Video Signal delivered into Australia by AARNet 20 November, 2008 12:02:00
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