The company’s UK operation has a number of servers running IBM software and was subject to the standard IBM licensing arrangements as Head of IT Support and Facilities, Alan Dillaway explains, “We were on a fairly rigid licensing scheme, facing standard renewal charges. We felt that there might be ways to bring the amount down and started looking at ways to do this.” Among the options Alan and his team looked at were reducing the number of users and making savings that way. A call to Applicable Limited, a leading provider of licensing consultancy, management and technical skills, provided RiverStone with an alternative way to save money on its IBM licensing.

According to Applicable's licensing specialist, Karen Knight, RiverStone was in a similar position to many companies.  They were buying their software under standard IBM terms, buying specific licenses on a piecemeal basis. For each user only the specific licenses they need at that time were being bought.  For servers per core licenses were being bought.  For many companies, there is a better option.

With her extensive knowledge of IBM licensing models, Karen Knight was able to propose the IBM Complete Enterprise Option (CEO) licensing model, as a more cost effective and flexible arrangement for the company.

CEO licensing changes the way software is licensed to make the groups of collaboration tools available to all users in the business.  Commonly used products are bundled up into easy to understand groups.  Each CEO offering has a different set of license entitlements, aimed to suit different business situations.  The bundles cover the complete range of Lotus brand software, DB2 software and many of the other IBM products a company may already be using. As Karen explains, “When you switch to a CEO bundle every user can use any, or all of the products within your chosen bundle. In addition to easing the administration of client licenses, the requirement to purchase server licenses is taken away completely, as you may deploy an unlimited number of server value units under this agreement.” For RiverStone, who have around 100 users and a 5 server license, this degree of flexibility enabled them to achieve cost savings of £2,200 per annum just on IBM licensing. “What is more,” Alan Dillaway says, “Applicable has helped position us well for future cost savings going forward.”

“we would not have been able to negotiate the deal Applicable got for us. Their help has been instrumental in saving us over £2,000 per year, without losing any maintenance or upgrade cover.” Alan Dillaway Head of IT Support and Facilities

The proposal put together by Applicable for RiverStone, to upgrade from a standard Passport Advantage license agreement to CEO Communications Licenses, is not something that RiverStone could have been able to negotiate without Applicable’s help. As Alan Dillaway explains, “We are a fairly self-sufficient organisation when it comes to IT. We tend only to call people like Applicable in for occasional ad-hoc consultancy. In this instance, however, we would not have been able to negotiate the deal Applicable got for us. Their help has been instrumental in saving us over £2,000 per year, without losing any maintenance or upgrade cover. In addition, it has given us a more flexible licensing environment – which works well for us.”