4 Strategies to Reduce Engineering Software Costs

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For many businesses, engineering software applications are some of the most expensive IT assets in their portfolio.

And as the organization grows, managing these software assets and avoiding unnecessary Engineering software costs can become very difficult.

Companies will need to take proactive steps to gain control of their engineering software assets spending.

Here are four effective strategies that can help in reducing the costs of your engineering software assets:

1. Manage software licenses

Reduce the number of different software licenses that satisfy identical functions to a minimum. There are a number of vendors that more or less offer the same things.

However, companies can benefit from attractive volume discounts if they trim down the large number of providers to just one vendor.

Another concern is the workload for internal support growing incrementally with the number of software versions running in the company.

The various versions have different requirements when updating the operating system, each of which will need individual support. It is much easier if only one version of the software is installed.

Lastly, keeping a close eye on all software applications installed on the system will help identify applications that present a significant security risk. These include games, applications with internet access capabilities, network applications, or cracker tools.

2. Get a powerful and automated engineering software management system

This tool should allow for the effective control and management of software resources by automatically discovering and suspending applications that are not in active use, and harvesting and redeploying idle licenses to other users.

It should also have a monitoring system on the activity levels of any targeted application and allow users to create reports for software usage analysis.

By understanding the true usage of expensive engineering software applications, companies can maximize these assets and reduce the uncertainty of manual license management.

Companies can then decide to reduce the number of licenses for applications with an excessive number of available licenses and reallocate the budget for other applications that are short on available licenses or for new software.


Open iT® LicenseOptimizer™ automatically suspends idle applications based on configurable parameters and
harvests licenses back to the pool. This allows companies to maximize the use of their expensive software licenses
by making sure that every checked out license is being actively used.

3. Set up notifications on renewal or repurchasing dates

An IT manager’s schedule can be quite hectic. Remembering when each software needs to be renewed or repurchased is near impossible, which means that some renewals may either be delayed or neglected.

It is important to have an engineering software management tool that allows users to set up automatic notifications of these dates.

Not only would IT managers be warned in advance so they can better prepare, but they would also be provided with the information necessary to make the best purchasing decisions. As a result, they can spend more time on preparing for a better negotiating position with the software vendor, which could drastically reduce costs.

4. Attain a better negotiating position

After getting the necessary accurate reports, organizations can now take advantage of contract renewals, apply for additional incentives, or revisit those contracts that charge a fixed enterprise fee and see if the provider can charge based on actual usage instead.

Metering software usage across the enterprise will not only help in negotiating a pay-per-use license agreements, but it will also allow companies to reduce software costs by cutting surplus licenses, utilizing license sharing across time zones, providing third-party documentation for software license compliance, and accurately planning the budget for future license purchases.

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. – Aristotle

Engineering software management solutions can help companies immensely in gaining financial control and reducing software costs by automatically collecting usage data and offering a wide variety of data analytics tools that offer insights on true software usage.

Understanding true software usage is the first step towards optimization and prevents overspending on unnecessary software. Overall, engineering software management tools offer businesses the benefits of an on-going proactive solution for their engineering software, which results in saving time, resources, and ultimately, costs.

Learn more about how software usage metering and analysis can help you maximize your engineering software assets and reduce costs.

Here are some of the best practices in gaining financial control and reducing software costs by effectively planning for future budgets to avoid unexpected costs.

Let us guide you through your engineering software management and optimization journey.

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