Tjeerd Edelman

Mar. 27,2019 | Software, Financial Services, Acquisition, Merger

Kin Hubbard, a humorist and journalist who lived 100 years ago once said “the safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket”. Clearly views are different today. The value of mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. financial-services sector alone more than doubled to a whopping $196.5 billion in 2018 from $82.3 billion in 2017. According to a report by White & Case, Financial Institutions M&A Sector 2019 Trends, there are possibilities of mega deals in Europe and that Wall Street behemoths may start flexing their expansion muscles. And when that materializes, a Stock Purchase Agreement (SPA) is the ...

Matt Ryan

Jan. 31,2019 | Software, Oracle, Cloud

I’m sure your organization is used to fifty calls per week from Oracle. You likely have thirty sales reps calling everyone from custodial services to the Chief Executive Officer to gain more information from you: What’s your IT roadmap? Do you know we have a 'cloud' for everything? What is your cloud migration strategy? What is your budget? Can we have more of it? From the cold callers to the executives, Oracle sales are trained in tactics to acquire as much information about your organization as possible. Their endgame is simple: force you into a sale (probably cloud) or catch you out of compliance. And of course, your being out of ...

Scott Braden

Aug. 29,2018 | news, Software, Office365, SaaS, Microsoft, Cloud

You may recall from our alert in July, Microsoft has substantial changes to their pricing due to take effect October 1, 2018. This pricing will cascade globally from Redmond product managers. As a result, we anticipate an incredibly busy September as customers try to understand what the impact will be and how best to optimize their agreements. The actual pricing is due to be available to resellers on September 1, 2018 and will likely become widely available soon after. In addition to the changes we previously communicated (see below), here are a few of the latest updates that have come to our attention: “Level A” is going away. Any Microsoft ...

Andrea Alterman

Aug. 29,2018 | Software, Procurement, Market Alerts, Negotiation, Cloud, HCM, Workday

Its been a long time since HCM solutions were primarily used for ‘counting noses’. Companies large and small understand the strategic value in their workforce and are aggressively using HCM solutions to support their investment, and HCM providers know it. Between emerging technology, disruptive companies, mergers and acquisitions, changing licensing models, cloud migrations, and much more, to say today’s HCM software market is under rapid change would be a massive understatement. Unfortunately, none of us really have the luxury of ignoring these changes lest we be left in the wake of overpaying for a non-compliant, underperforming, and ...

Scott Braden

Jul. 30,2018 | news, Software, Microsoft, Cloud

True to their usual schedule, Microsoft has announced some substantial changes to their pricing policies, along with some price increases to Office and Windows licenses / subscriptions, to be effective October 2018. There are some significant changes hidden in Microsoft’s bland language – most notably “Removing the programmatic volume discounts (Level A and Open Level C) in Enterprise Agreement (EA)/EA Subscription, MPSA, Select/ Select Plus, and Open programs (Open, Open Value, Open Value Subscription)” - which will in effect cause substantial price increases for the majority of small and medium businesses with fewer than 2,400 PCs/users. ...

Tjeerd Edelman

Jun. 28,2018 | Software, SaaS, Cloud

Recently I asked myself this question: when did the words ‘cloud computing’ become the common expression to simply explain a network of remote servers? According to Technology Review, it can be traced back twenty two years ago to 1996. Inside the offices of Compaq Computer a small group of technology executives were plotting the future of the Internet business and calling it “cloud computing.” Not only would all business software move to the Web, but what they termed “cloud computing-enabled applications” would become common. In 2018, cloud computing has become a ubiquitous piece of jargon that many find annoying, but also hard to avoid. And ...

Scott Braden

Nov. 2,2017 | Software, Office365, SaaS, Microsoft

Microsoft is coming to the close of its first half earnings in Q4. If you know what to look for, the timing represents a strategic opportunity to review and optimize your spend. Did you know: When renewing a Microsoft EA or Office365 subscription, most clients experience a net increase in costs of at least 20-25% for the same services, licenses and subscriptions. These increases result from several sources: The low, “teaser” prices offered by Microsoft to get enterprises onto Office365 are not being offered at renewal – despite that there has been no change at all in the services used, and that in general the promise of cloud computing ...