Service on demand

Web licences

Usually allowing some form of ‘light interface’ via web access to the tool’s capabilities, this is usually suitable for staff requiring remote access, only occasional access, or usage of just a small subset of the functionality (e.g. engineering staff wishing to log details of actions taken on incidents or users just wanting to log an incident directly). Web licences usually cost a lot less than other licences (may even be free with other licences!) and the ratio of use is also often lower – so overall costs are reduced further.

Note that some staff may require access to multiple licences (e.g. support staff may require a dedicated or shared licence when in the office during the day, but may require a web licence when providing out of hours support from home). Keep in mind that licences may be required for customer s/ user s/suppliers using the same tool to input, view or update record s or reports.

Note: Some licence agreement s (of any of the types mentioned above) may restrict the usage of the software to an individual device or CPU!

There has been a trend within the IT industry for supplier s to offer IT application s ‘on demand’, where access is given to the application for a period of demand and then severed when it is no longer needed – and charged on the basis of the time spent using the application. This type of offering may be offered by some ITSM tool suppliers – which could be attractive to smaller organizations or if the tools in question are very specialized and used relatively infrequently.

An alternative to this is where the use of a tool is offered as part of a specific consultancy assignment (e.g. a specialist Capacity Management consultancy, say, who may offer a regular but relatively infrequent Capacity Planning consultancy package and provide use of the tools for the duration of the assignment). In such cases the licence fees are likely to be included as part of, or, an addendum to, the consultancy fee.

A further variation is where software is licensed and charged on an agent/ activity basis. An example of this is interrogation/ monitoring and/or simulation software (e.g. agent software that can simulate pre-defined customer paths through an organization ’s website, to assess and report upon performance and availability). Such software is typically charged on the basis of the number of agents, their location and/or the amount of activity generated.

In all cases, full investigations of the licensing structure must be investigated and well understood during the procurement investigations and well before tools are deployed – so that the ultimate cost s do not come as any sort of surprise.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23