Customer Choice Awards: Enterprises Evaluate Their Software Vendors Across Eight Categories

ITASCA, IL--(Marketwired - May 20, 2015) - The enterprise software industry places so much emphasis on cost, benefit and ROI that one might presume these are the only criterion upon which customers rate their vendors. But a new report, prepared jointly by Flexera Software and IDC, reveals that organizations form deep-seated opinions about software vendors based on a wide spectrum of criteria -- factors that vendors should take note of and be aware of as they develop, launch and support their products.

In the enterprise survey forming the basis of the report, respondents were asked to indicate whether they agree or disagree with a series of statements, as applied to some of the largest commercial software vendors in the world -- Adobe, CA, Citrix, EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, Symantec, VMWare -- who collectively represent almost 50 percent market share -- or more than $200 billion in software spend. Only enterprise survey respondents, of which there were 147, completed these vendor rating questions. The vendor for each category garnering the most "Strongly Agree" or "Agree" responses won the "Customer Choice Award" for that category. Likewise, the vendor in each category garnering the most "Strongly Disagree" or "Disagree" responses lost for that category. Here are the results:

• This vendor is easy to work with: Winner -- EMC
• 91 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that EMC is easy to work with. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 43 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
• This vendor's applications are easy to manage, apply patches, maintain and upgrade: Winner -- VMware
• 91 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that VMware's applications are easy to manage, apply patches, maintain and upgrade. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 35 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
• This vendor's licensing rules are easy to understand making it easy to maintain software license compliance: Winner -- HP
• 89.8 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that HP's licensing rules are easy to understand, making it easy to maintain compliance. However it was close -- very close! 89.6 percent agreed or strongly agreed that Citrix' licensing rules are easy to understand and maintain compliance. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 42.9% of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
• It is easy for us to understand and manage our usage of and spend for this vendor's applications: Winner -- VMware
• 93 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that it is easy for them to understand and manage usage of and spend for VMware's applications. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 31 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
• This vendor's licensing rules around mobile, virtualization and the cloud will better facilitate our organization's migration to those environments: Winner -- Citrix
• 88 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that Citrix' licensing rules around mobile, virtualization and the cloud will better facilitate their migration to those environments. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 45 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
• We rarely face software license compliance audits from this vendor: Winner -- Citrix
• 94 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that they rarely face software license compliance audits from Citrix. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 35 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
• We are rarely forced to pay software license compliance true-up fees to this vendor: Winner -- HP
• 93 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that they are rarely forced to pay true up fees to HP. Oracle had the lowest scores in this category, with 29 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
• The price for this vendor's applications are reasonable and provide good ROI: Winner -- Citrix
• 87 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that Citrix offers reasonably priced software that provides good ROI. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 44 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.

"The impact that enterprise software has on an organization goes beyond a simple question of whether it delivers the desired business outcome," said Amy Konary, Research Vice President -- Software Licensing and Provisioning at IDC. "Applications require ongoing effort and cost to manage, support and maintain throughout the lifecycle of the license. The ease with which organizations can support those applications, and partner with their application providers during the process has a dramatic impact on vendors' favorability ratings."

"Building great products that deliver ROI is and should be the primary driver for every software vendor. However this report suggests that software companies must also look downstream and optimize the customer experience across a wide range of value criteria," said Richard Northing, Senior Vice President of Products and Services at Flexera Software. "Ease of management, remaining in license compliance, upgrading and migrations -- are just a few of the factors that have very real impact on organizations' ability to support their applications, and therefore on their overall opinion of their software vendors."

Resources:

Access the 2015 Customer Choice Awards: Enterprises Rate their Software Vendors Report

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About This Report

This report is based on the 2015 Application Usage and Value survey, conducted by Flexera Software with input from IDC's Software Pricing and Licensing Research division under the direction of Amy Konary, Research Vice President -- Software Licensing and Provisioning at IDC. The surveys were completed between November, 2014 and January, 2015, by more than 580 respondents from software vendors, intelligent device manufacturers and end-user enterprises. This annual research project looks at software licensing, compliance and installation trends and best practices.

About Flexera Software

Flexera Software helps application producers and enterprises increase application usage and the value they derive from their software. Our software licensing, compliance and installation solutions are essential to ensure continuous licensing compliance, optimized software investments and to future-proof businesses against the risks and costs of constantly changing technology. Over 80,000 customers turn to Flexera Software as a trusted and neutral source for the knowledge and expertise we have gained as the marketplace leader in licensing, installation and compliance for over 20 years and for the automation and intelligence designed into our products. For more information, please go to: www.flexerasoftware.com.

© 2015 Flexera Software LLC. All other brand and product names mentioned herein may be the trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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