Five lock-in traps to avoid when buying software

2. CONSIDER THE IMPACT OF VIRTUALISATION AND OTHER NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Software vendors will often charge a premium for using their wares within virtualisation platforms or using multi-core processing, or even for having multiple companies represented within a single database.

It's vitally important to take a thorough look at any software contract to ensure the terms and conditions don't limit your organisation's ability to adopt new and innovative technologies.

"Virtualisation is an absolute nightmare for software vendors," Sweeney said. "There is a tension emerging between what vendors want and what users expect."

Sweeney said many software vendors were still struggling to move beyond 1980's-era licensing schemes of "one program on one box".

Pricing for most Microsoft enterprise software, meanwhile, was currently based on devices accessing a service. This clashed with the ideals of the "internet generation", Sweeney said, which wanted to be charged on a "per use" rather than "per device" basis.

Sweeney said the per device model came with complications.

"Let's say you have 3000 desktops on a fleet, running an OEM version of Windows XP with Office installed," Sweeney said. "But you have 200 Program Managers amongst your staff that also need to use Microsoft Project and Visio.

"You could install a Citrix client such that those 200 can access that software no matter what machine they are on. How many licenses of Visio and Project do you need? Not 200, says Microsoft, but as many as the devices they could potentially access that software from!"

The licensing scenario was complicated further should the organisation also invest in purchasing "home rights" for use of that software under Microsoft's software assurance licensing schema.

"As soon as you have VPN access into those tools, there is another device which officially Microsoft expects a license for," Sweeney said.

Read on for the number one...