Minimizing Software Costs in a Networked Environment

Some software companies allow you to purchase only the maximum copies that you will use at any given time as long as compliance can be monitored by license server software. The license server software that we use is called "Keyserver" from Sassafras Software. Since at any given time only a fraction of the installed copies of a specific software package are in use, we may not need to buy one copy of the software package for each machine on which it is installed. In addition, we can add software to additional machines without necessarily having to order a new copy.

The following example illustrates the advantages of using the Keyserver software: A department has 40 copies of SoftwareX 1.0, but knows from a trial period that only a maximum of 8 copies are in use at any time. That suggests that when the upgrade to SoftwareX comes out, they may only need to purchase 10-12 copies. That is, purchase the maximum number we have used plus a few more for some margin of safety.

If each upgrade to SoftwareX costs $100, then they have saved the department $2800. Multiply this savings by the number of products we use and you can see how the cost of software licenses can really add up.

The savings are even greater when you consider new software packages which a department might add to its standard installation. For instance, a department can purchase in volume 20 licenses of ClarisWorks for $39.00 a copy, key it and put it on all of their Mac's and PC's. This allows us to install ClarisWorks on 80 computers for a total cost $780.00 and a per machine cost of $9.75. Were we to purchase 80 copies of ClarisWorks individually from the campus software store at a cost of $67.17 per machine, our total costs would be $5,373.60.

An additional benefit of the Keyserver to each group within a department is that it is less problematic to provide a copy of a keyed program on each machine. This is because our costs are not calculated according to the number of installations, but according to the maximum number of copies in concurrent use.

Keyserver will also make it easier to keep software versions in sync, so that users are not frustrated by having PhotoShop 2.5 on one machine and PhotoShop 3.0 on another.

Hardware requirements will still limit how software is distributed in some cases. For instance, some computers don't have the speed, RAM or hard drive space for PhotoShop. Also, we will not use Keyserver with all our software, just those products with which it is compatible and legal.

The Keyserver system works by monitoring software usage via the network. We make sure that we have a few more licenses than the maximum that have been in use at any time. This prevents users from being locked out and allows for growth in the number of computer systems. In the year that we have been using the Keyserver system, no one has been prevented from running software because of too few licenses.

Since the Keyserver system is dependent on the reliability of the network, the IS manager should have machines running as Keyserver shadows in various parts of the network. This built-in redundancy will allow the keyed software to work even if portions of the network go down. The shadow function runs in the background of a Mac and consumes almost no CPU time, so the shadow machines can and are being used for normal computing tasks.

I have used the Keyserver system for almost two years, and most people have not even noticed that their software is keyed. Recently, I negotiated an agreement with Adobe which will let us key PhotoShop. In the last two months this has saved us approximately $1,600 in PhotoShop purchases alone.

At our current rate of growth we should reach over 100 Mac's by Fall or early next year. Appended to this note is a spreadsheet describing what our approximate savings will be. Since the cost of a software upgrade is often the same as the price of a new educational copy, the spreadsheet gives a close approximation of our savings next year.

The spreadsheet does not include the potential savings that may occur if I can key more of our current software. It also does not reflect the savings in system setup time, as well as the savings in staff time and paperwork because we will not need to order new copies of programs for each machine. However, it also does not include the cost of extra manuals if the current manuals and online help are not sufficient.

In summary, I believe that our use of a software license server (Keyserver), and our volume software purchases has been a great success. We have been able to dramatically reduce software costs, as well as decrease system setup time and support costs, with no end-user problems.