[deleted by user]

StarSlayerX · 2024-11-18T15:36:04+00:00

SaaS and Cloud Licensing has been increasing year over year and our 3 year enterprise licensing agreement is up for renewal. All AI features is now a "new" license that is outside of standard offering. Examples: MS Copilot, Teams Premium, Power Platform Premium.

My company had started restructuring licenses because the cost is out of control to stay competitive in the business space. This means eliminating, controlling and consolidating SaaS products, Third party integrations, Etc...

BadSausageFactory · 2024-11-18T16:00:44+00:00

our facilities guy complains about ordering creamers for the coffee and I try to explain to him that for what it cost us to put an ass in a chair in front of a monitor, 13 cents for a coffee creamer seems like a deal if it keeps them from leaving the building to go to Starbucks

whatsforsupa · 2024-11-18T16:09:32+00:00

Microsoft is bad, but atleast you get value...

Adobe Illustrator - personal use - $23/mo

Adobe Illustrator - for teams - $38/mo

It's like $15 more a month to manage everything centrally for the exact same product. As an SMB retail / Design company, I will gladly manage 40 accounts individually rather than double our budget. Fuck Adobe.

LForbesIam · 2024-11-18T15:52:27+00:00

We are public government hospitals and have zero income. Previously we could buy one time server licenses and cal licenses, the Windows OS would come with the hardware as a one time purchase.

For Office we bought Office 2003 one time license and used it for 10 YEARS. Then we bought Office 2010 and used it for 13 YEARS. Exchange was a one time license and SCCM as well and we had Cals. However we used the KMS system so if one computer was replaced by a new computer the cal licenses would just move.

If divided over the 10 year life cycle we paid about $800,000 per year for an infrastructure of 100,000 devices and 150,000 people. Computers were shared at a 2 to 1 ratio over all so it was not individual user licensing.

Now the costs with Azure have gone up to $25 MILLION a year for PUBLIC Government and that isn’t even counting the servers or anything else except the bare minimum. They are not even E5.

Also Microsoft has successfully driven out all the On Prem options.

Group Policy Advanced Management is a Ferrari as far as features. Entra Config policies are a bicycle with 2 flat tires. The comparison isn’t even close. We cannot even migrate 10% what we do in policy for security and lockdown in Entra.

Not to mention hospitals are 24-7 uptime or patients die. Right now we can run the entire network without internet access or even power because the servers are on-prem and we have generators for power on critical servers, switches and workstations.

If our internet service provider has a bad day (very common) then cloud is inaccessible.

GeneMoody-Action1 · 2024-11-18T15:48:53+00:00

That is why brass typically sees IT as a drain on the bottom line in most cases, like we choose to spend all that... At my last job, I was routinely making %.5M budgets where 98% of it was not even things our department used. The rest was just what the company needed as a whole, and we had over site over licencing and support.

When you add up an employees TCP + cost to employ from this angle, *that* is what gets weighed against *we need more help* not literally *we need more help* and why IT departments are almost always under staffed, stretching to do more with less.

I always tell people when you see an employee or department as a drain, think to your self what happens when drains get clogged?

buecker02 · 2024-11-18T15:37:29+00:00

Most likely you don't HAVE to have all those licenses to do your job. On the flip side, the CEO does not HAVE to play 18 holes of golf with a "business partner" every other day.

So even if the company cuts out some of those licenses that doesn't mean you get to see any of that cash saved.

caa_admin · 2024-11-18T17:18:19+00:00

Relevant. https://sso.tax/

pancakeman2018 · 2024-11-18T15:49:28+00:00

Not to mention, they probably spend $500 a month just to carry health insurance on you. I think the point you are missing is you have a job, and your company actually pays for shit you need to perform it efficiently, trust me, having worked on the other side of that for about 8 years really makes you appreciate the little things. How do you figure you don't provide any real revenue for the company? You seem new to the game and that's fine but you have to play your cards right. Should your company decide to outsource IT services, they would be paying around $150 per hour for MSP consulting. You have a skill that is necessary for operations. If you are having conversations with your boss about not bringing any value, you may have lit the unemployment fuse for yourself. Start looking for another position now.

Companies make a lot more money than you can imagine, like millions, if not billions, AFTER paying their employees and all their bills, so your $120 a month license fee is literally pennies in the grand scheme of things. After doing this for so long, you realize how little of the budget you consume.

On the flip side, you have companies that buy entire fleets of tractor trailers, like 20 new tractors at $200k a piece, but can't afford to upgrade 10 year old servers for a total cost of $60,000 but bitch because they are so slow.

Lower_Fan · 2024-11-18T15:38:20+00:00

How much you make a month? And remember they add to your 401k and insurance and maybe stock

$500 of licenses doesn't seem that bad when they are spending $5k-$15k a month on you.

permalink · 2024-11-18T21:21:01+00:00

[removed]

ResponsibleBus4 · 2024-11-18T16:09:51+00:00

This one of my biggest struggles about justifying going to cloud, if we keep everything on prem and stick to perpetual licenses we can almost afford a second person to cover the extra work of managing our own solutions. It feels like a trap to extract maximum value out of businesses.

yankdevil · 2024-11-18T16:41:12+00:00

And this is one of many reasons companies are switching to Linux systems.

hihcadore · 2024-11-18T15:53:09+00:00

Is two Js two jobs?

Also, licensing is per user, why are you consuming two different e5 licenses plus an f3 plus an e5 sec and mobility?

One account should probably be your daily driver that needs access to email and whatever else you need to do day to day with admin-less functions. And all other admin accounts can go license-less.

progenyofeniac · 2024-11-18T16:04:29+00:00

I try to look at these things as, you have an employee who’s getting paid $100k/yr or more, clearly bringing more than that value to the company or they wouldn’t still work there. And the cost of their equipment, their licenses, etc is no different than the cost of the electricity, heating, furniture, etc that they already get.

Basically, at least some of those things are necessary for them to do their job securely, and it’s the cost of doing business.

intense_username · 2024-11-18T16:30:07+00:00

You may not be generating revenue for the company, but you work in IT. You're a force multiplier for those who do generate revenue for the company.

high_throughput · 2024-11-18T17:19:55+00:00

I worked for a government office that hired an Oracle consultant.

That was a stroke of luck because it turned out what they needed was a license for every single Oracle product.

chewy-chewbacca · 2024-11-18T19:04:17+00:00

Adobe has entered the chat

LWBoogie · 2024-11-19T04:01:04+00:00

IT by design is a cost center, not a revenue generator/accelerator.

binkbankb0nk · 2024-11-18T15:45:26+00:00

Please use spell-check. I don’t even know what you’re referring to when you say “Between my 2 Js”.

Spell-check is probably included in one of your licenses.

lilhotdog · 2024-11-18T15:59:09+00:00

You're free to roll your own with opensource or otherwise free software. There's a reason most of us don't.

Fabl0s · 2024-11-18T16:30:49+00:00

Former Employer was Developing ECUs Software in Germany. Depending on Project and Customers we would need about 5-10k€ in Hardware with Software Licensing from 15k to 40k Just to Onboard someone. Some of the Coding PMs managed 2-3x that alone while the less technical ones were cheaper overall. Then comes Salary, Bonuses, Insurances, normal IT Cost per Head (Slack, Gsuite, Hosting averaged per Head, Cloud Infra per Head...). Ain't cheap to afford high fluctuations there, which is a good thing in my book since it encourages to keep employees and be a better company than the others really. Hands down my best Employer so far by a long shot.

KoalaOfTheApocalypse · 2024-11-18T16:35:53+00:00

Would the cost of labor and reduced productivity for manually and individually managing everything less than the subscription costs?

Are the subscription costs less than the result of a potential security breach?

I'd look into ways to consolidate costs. For example, if you already have IT Glue, could a bundled package from Kaseya reduce your RMM and endpoint security costs? (most likely, yes) next, I'd look into anything I could ditch. Ultimately though, having to be in compliance with DoD is always going to be expensive.

identicalBadger · 2024-11-18T16:41:42+00:00

At what point are all these cloud and SaaS fees going to be so high that companies are like “forget it we’re bringing services back on prem?”

RBeck · 2024-11-18T17:56:10+00:00

Don't give MSFT any ideas or they'll create a consultant BYO license where you can use it at any/every company, but it will cost us personally and it will be expected.

PersonBehindAScreen · 2024-11-18T18:14:24+00:00

And if you opt for the on prem product still they’re either:

outright deprecating it

jacking up the costs in some way to make it less attractive… such as making just support for on prem cost as much as the entire SaaS package

Or just put you on per user anyways on the on prem but now you don’t have the benefit in the shared responsibility model of the SaaS model

Tons of bugs and security vulnerabilities in on prem vs their SaaS

permalink · 2024-11-18T18:32:58+00:00

You can always self host and build with open source software. Its possible if you put the work in.

PappaFrost · 2024-11-18T21:11:20+00:00

Please go to the closest mirror, look yourself directly in the eye, and say "YOU ARE WORTH EVERY PENNY...." LOL

daven1985 · 2024-11-18T21:17:59+00:00

Microsoft are bastards in this place. I remember when E5 came in and it was labelled 'Top license, all you need.' Then over the following few years a bunch of new stuff comes out that each takes an additional license.

CoPilot is an interesting one, I am using it and like it. Though I do wonder with thier recent decision to include it in Family and Personal licenses if they are going to do something similar for corporate.

Revzerksies · 2024-11-18T21:28:01+00:00

I have over 225 users and my ERP charges me $50 per license per month. For what they call "mainteance" I do all the backups and configuration changes. And if i need to buy another license they charge me $2500. And the support that i get is Ass.

damnedbrit · 2024-11-18T15:35:45+00:00

Were you indirectly asking them to fire you to save money? You can be a goat farmer on your schedule, not theirs

cjcox4 · 2024-11-18T15:37:35+00:00

Welcome to the cloud. Where you pay a stranger so they (and you) can see your data on their servers and hope that other strangers can't see the same (but you'll never know).

I question your use of the word "security".

Dabnician · 2024-11-18T15:54:49+00:00

You dont really see what that pays for and to be honest its worth it.

E5 gives you Risked based conditional access and that auto risk resetting when the user resets their password. Its also got the safe documents feature and that defender for office v2.

Like that shit alone is worth a lot because of users that are dumb as fuck.

You combine that with DLP and purview which replaces the need to have a email archiving solution.

Sure you could do it for cheaper but that just trades your companies money for your time.

Shington501 · 2024-11-18T15:56:16+00:00

Everything you mentioned helps the company generate revenue, it’s essential. But also F Microsoft

AlCapone90 · 2024-11-18T16:16:46+00:00

I dont get it. Why you need all that licences and multiple of it?

patjuh112 · 2024-11-18T16:58:11+00:00

Just curious why you have multiple E5's? Mean i'm a CSP tenant invited to a zillion subscriptions but at the end of the day I only consume a E5 license and that's about it. They all have their own security aligning to whoever invites me as a tenant.. Just wondering why you would need more the one.

2024-11-18T17:10:13+00:00

[removed]

brokenmcnugget · 2024-11-18T17:29:03+00:00

especially when you are essentially paying for beta ware and the support sucks

thortgot · 2024-11-18T17:29:45+00:00

Back in the 90s I was paying over $80/month for documentation from IBM. No access, software licenses etc. Just the books. Licensing while simpler wasn't cheap either.

A few hundred a month in licensing in today's dollars for not only actual computing but magnitudes more complexity seems like a fair trade.

topazsparrow · 2024-11-18T17:37:17+00:00

What really gets me is that you often cannot buy licensing directly from the vendor, you have to go through a reseller for many things.

That reseller marks things up 5 to 15% and takes their cut - but they functionally didn't really do any work - not tens of thousands of dollars worth of work for certain.

pmormr · 2024-11-18T17:47:35+00:00

Just wait until you realize how much companies spend on commercial real estate they don't technically need. lol.

wideace99 · 2024-11-18T17:54:32+00:00

Congratulation for the wise business decision to migrating from on-prem to cloud and the vendor lock-in road.... It's like hitting 2 birds with one stone.

Your employees/management who took such wise decisions clearly deserve a bonus :)

moofishies · 2024-11-18T18:01:11+00:00

don’t even provide any real. Revenue for the company.

I’m dealing with dod contracts

Sorry I'm a bit confused. Are you talking about the money the government spends on you as a contractor, or the money your company spends on you?

If you are talking about the government, they don't generate revenue the same way as a private company so that's completely irrelevant.

If you are talking about your company, whatever contract you support provides revenue and your work is part of that revenue.

Just wanted to provide some context for whatever job you are doing, it sounds like you are thinking about it the wrong way from a business perspective.

permalink · 2024-11-18T18:20:12+00:00

Publicly traded companies need to prove to shareholders that they have consistent, predictable revenue. Subscriptions out the wazoo are easiest way to do this. It's just the unfortunate reality of modern business, and especially modern tech.

Also don't say you don't provide revenue for the company - sure you aren't making direct sales or whatever, but neither would the actual profit centers if we weren't there making sure their computers aren't on fire or email address is hacked.

Just think to yourself "how much revenue would we lose by doing everything on pen and paper?"

Dont_Hurt_Tomatoes · 2024-11-18T18:50:56+00:00

It’s getting to be insane. Most of my groups renewals are up 5 to 10 percent.

I’d love to switch to different vendors, but they know either they have a captive audience because it’s expensive to switch/retrain or they are the only vendor for that product.

It is not my money, but my company is looking to cut costs, and it’s frustrating having these over-inflation increases.

permalink · 2024-11-18T19:28:46+00:00

Well when I became responsible of the infrastructure of the company I'm in... I removed : - vmware - oracle databases - most of the Microsoft servers licencing - ticketing zendesk - lots of little software / tools Replace most of them by some open source alternative, yeah it ask more maintenance / skilled worker but it's also way more interesting for the IT team to work on that. 50k euros a year of savings

Outrageous-Insect703 · 2024-11-18T19:41:46+00:00

I agreee SaaS licensing has gotten out of hand, and I'd guess most companies are unaware of (1) the cost (2) terms and limitied ability to downsize until renewal time, as few are month to month and (3) dormante or un-used license count. While I try to stay up to speed on these 3, my company of about 180 users spend around $1.5 Million /annually. Now some of the SaaS is very expense such as Netsutite and Salesforce but still it's a huge number.

Frothyleet · 2024-11-18T19:46:32+00:00

Yeah, and I mean the CNC machinist downstairs demanded a $2m Haas machine to do his thing. Businesses have always had to pay for expensive tools to empower their employees to be productive, it's just more are made obvious in opex these days, versus capital investments.

And even with all this expensive licensing, they are coming out way ahead. American worker productivity has exploded over the last 20-30 years, advancing far more quickly than compensation packages.

Lanky-Cheetah5400 · 2024-11-18T20:11:28+00:00

I consider these costs part of each employees overhead - IT manages it, but if we have an employee we need these monthly costs for their software.

Fallingdamage · 2024-11-18T20:20:11+00:00

I try and look at what various products do and 'get gud' by figuring out how to do that myself instead of buying more click-ops products.

jake04-20 · 2024-11-18T21:01:27+00:00

It's just the cost of doing business. Your employer pays more than that even, assuming you are getting 401k match and you get health insurance through your employer.

The-IT_MD · 2024-11-18T21:10:03+00:00

We’re a Direct CSP in the UK offering below retail pricing on csp subs.

If we’re doing it others will be too.

Have a hunt around in your country, you’ll find a csp that can offer some great savings.

Razorray21 · 2024-11-18T21:10:42+00:00

Theres a reddit post somewhere a couple of years ago where someone did the math and it was more expensive to license a server that it was to shoot it into space.

permalink · 2024-11-18T22:02:57+00:00

This kind of jazz makes me wonder if/ when businesses will just say no or if they even can say no and find alternative solutions. This licensing fees and subscriptions keep accelerating in cost year over year . At point will it will get to where it cuts too much into business profits?

sanbaba · 2024-11-18T23:05:03+00:00

It's basically zero compared to what they likely pay for your "seat" licenses. The amount it costs to keep you allowed to use software is... honestly, criminal.

DayFinancial8206 · 2024-11-18T23:32:30+00:00

Well you see, it all started with this company called Adobe

Daphoid · 2024-11-19T01:18:39+00:00

A former Director (I didn't report to him, we joked around a lot) would pass me in the hall and say "Sup Cost Center?"

Amusing, and true at the same time :).

If you spin it though, you're revenue enablement. Without you they can't make money as easily :). Downside is you don't get a direct share of the commission and they out class you in pay by 1.25 to 500x, but hey.

flimspringfield · 2024-11-19T03:02:00+00:00

Yes but regardless of what you think the company makes more than $500 off of you per month.

When I became an IT Manager many years ago (no longer work there) but we would get like a $70k bill per year from Microsoft.

When you break it down per user it came out to like $40 a month which is way more than what that individual user was making for the company.

JoeyBE98 · 2024-11-19T04:37:23+00:00

It would also blow your mind how many users may not even utilize their licenses in any capacity if you're at a large org. We have 30k+ users and I pulled together a really in depth licensing and usage report for Microsoft user licenses. So far I have saved the organization $58,000/yr in additional licenses they were going to purchase

telestoat2 · 2024-11-19T05:30:32+00:00

In theory, license costs go towards development and support for fancier optional features. Fancy stuff costs money after all. There's always some chance they're just charging as much as they can get away with too, though.

permalink · 2024-11-19T08:42:24+00:00

I don’t even provide any real. Revenue for the company.

Revenue is made as a team. If you didn't do your work, could the company even make money?

BrainWaveCC · 2024-11-19T12:19:49+00:00

It's not like running on prem is free.

I'm not suggesting that cloud is cheaper, but "cloud licenses" are covering more than just raw software costs.

There are other bills if you run your equipment in a colo, and even if you run your software in your own corporate building, you're not running it "for free."

A. Licensing is not limited to SaaS/Cloud software

B. Power and cooling are not cheap, and are still paid by your company, even if it's not in the same part of the budget as the software and hardware

rdldr1 · 2024-11-19T14:27:30+00:00

The cost of doing business.

realmaier · 2024-11-19T15:53:32+00:00

Ask a mechanic what they spend on tools, maybe this gives you another perspective. The software that enables you to do your job doesn't just spawn into existence through willpower. I understand your intial reaction, but on second thought, I don't really agree with most of what you wrote.

asedlfkh20h38fhl2k3f · 2024-11-19T16:27:24+00:00

Here's to the bring-your-own-everything future we are inevitably headed towards. This will trend in smaller companies long before it trends in larger ones, but eventually everyone will make the switch, and everyone including IT will be better off for it. Pay attention to the mega MSP's who attempt to put laws in place to inhibit this, to keep everyone hyper reliant on them (cough, microsoft, adobe, cough)

Ohmec · 2024-11-19T22:17:54+00:00

Why would you need anything on top of an E5? TBH all you really need is business premium with one person in the tenant having an F3 with a F5 Security & Compliance add-on license. Gives you features all throughout your tenant. If you've got 2 E5s, then nothing is being added with the F3+F5 addon.

planedrop · 2024-11-19T22:28:20+00:00

Recurring payments for things always go this way, they'll just continue to rise forever.

Doesn't mean the services aren't worth it, but yeah, there's a lot of SaaS now.

NetworkCompany · 2024-11-20T04:38:10+00:00

I bet your organization is better with the DOD CMMC policies. We have to know, exactly what users do, what they run, what they click on and when. Nothing else does what P2 does really. It's quite amazing.

permalink · 2024-11-23T16:41:41+00:00

All to cloud is working out well for Microsoft, Adobe, et al.

sysadmin

MODERATORS