WWT's Ben Boswell: Does the Enterprise Agreement have a future?
Almost every aspect of what originally shaped the volume-based EA has now changed, and question remains about how the EA will drive value into the future.
Ben Boswell, director of UK and Ireland, authored an article for Computer Business Review on enterprise agreements and how they'll drive value in the future.
Posted by CBR on June 7, 2017:
There was a time when the Enterprise Agreement (EA) was a straightforward go-to-market strategy, although it was mainly the preserve of the few big software companies – Microsoft, Oracle, IBM – who sold big, standardised packages to large enterprises. Mainly measured by volume, the cost benefits were the main attraction.
Almost every aspect of the landscape which originally shaped the volume-based EA, making this form of software licensing possible, has now changed and question remains about how the EA will drive value into the future.
Long-term economic constraints have put pressure on organisations to re-evaluate their IT spend. Under this spotlight, the traditional EA model, although marketed on price, rarely stands up to scrutiny. Estimates vary but the average business utilises only around 35 to 38 per cent of the software they pay for within an EA. The balance of that becomes shelfware. It's now pretty widely accepted that the EA has to continue its move away from this volume-based, transactional selling.
