SoftwareONE: 'Crisis will prove financial value of cloud to customers'

Licencing giant's UK services sales head talks to CRN about helping customers spend smarter on their software and being flexible on licences

The surge in remote working amid the COVID-19 pandemic will prove the cost-saving value of the cloud to customers, according to SoftwareONE's UK services sales manager.

Antony Attfield told CRN that the ongoing situation is making customers re-evaluate their software agreements and consumption models, which in turn will lead to cost savings as firms of all sizes struggle with the financial costs of the outbreak.

"It continues to amaze me that from the smallest to the largest companies I deal with, some still don't have a really firm grip on what's installed, what's being used and when all the contracts, entitlements and renewals are. There are some really big wins and opportunities to avoid money wastage there," he said.

"I definitely see companies that maybe hadn't jumped into cloud and consumption before have done so now, they've got their head around it a little bit more and see they can make it work. They will have to put some control and governance around it, but I think the cloud consumption will continue to grow beyond this [crisis]."

Highlighting where customers can save money will be key for the channel as firms of all sizes are feeling the financial impact from the outbreak, Attfield advised.

"Companies will start to realise that there are ways that they can buy software really wrong, but there are ways that they can buy it really intelligently and make huge savings and optimisation for buying," he explained.

"It's easy to talk about cash flow now in the short term, but this is going to have big long term repercussions. I think companies will realise how much they're reliant on software and it just it has to carry on to make the business continue.

"Consumption will continue to grow, probably not as much as it currently is - I think there'll be a dip - but I think companies will continue to invest in it and I think IT as a whole probably will have some more significant investment.

"Where before it might have been seen as an audit risk, I think now people will start to realise that this is a way of really controlling spend, and software is a really significant spend component of most businesses nowadays."

The pivot to remote working and placing a proportion of their staff on furlough has led to licencing challenges for customers, the services exec said, adding that these challenges in the working environment may lead to overpayment for licences. SoftwareONE helped one customer save £650,000 on their cloud strategy around Office 365 recently, he claimed.

"It's quite a turbulent time in managing and controlling those licence accounts and numbers and most people don't have the right data sets to be able to do that," Attfield elaborated.

"There can, therefore, be a lag between how much a customer is actually paying and what they should be paying.

"We've seen this in so many organisations that we speak to, who think ‘cash is king', but also every customer is unique. So do they want to look for a more flexible monthly type of agreement, which allows their numbers to fluctuate up and down depending on if they're going through a boom of remote working? That sort of organisation would likely need to have that flexibility to turn the tap off as they start to move people back into the office.

"Then, you've got other companies, which are unfortunately having to furlough staff, and that number of usage might come dramatically down earlier than they think.

"Give them the options that are available to them, because not everybody will give them those options."