With the recession hitting IT budgets, enterprise software vendors are being forced to provide better value as well as simplify licensing and pricing.
So says Forrester analyst Ray Wang in a new report, which said it was good news that vendors were focusing on value, but bad in that not all could deliver on it.
The report interviewed enterprise software vendors such as Oracle, which Wang said should be applauded for publishing its price lists and a software investment guide.
However, it criticised Oracle's policy on virtualisation, which required customers to count physical CPUs, and charges for all the processors on a server. It would save customers money if licensing was based on virtual CPUs.
As vendors had to consolidate during the recession, the report said that application delivery professionals could commit to single vendor "platform stacks" from the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP or even smaller companies.
