12 days of ITAM: Day 2 - Relicensing

ITAM News & Analysis

12 days of ITAM: Day 2 - Relicensing

For day 2 of the 12 days of ITAM, we speak with Michael Vilain, Head of Sales at the software relicensing company Capefoxx about software relicensing.

1. What was the most memorable development in software relicensing in 2022?

To see customers starting to purchase relicensed software again, as everything more or less stopped during Covid. Our business is very dependent on us going to events and telling customers about this possibility of software relicensing, so the inability to attend events during Covid was a big challenge for us. Why are events important for us to help spread the word? Because Microsoft has 10,000 resellers in Europe, and none of them would dream about telling their clients that they could save money on their Microsoft IT infrastructure.

2. What will be the big development in 2023?

There are a lot of customers demanding relicensed software, especially Microsoft Office 2016, as both versions 2016 & 2019 are supported up until 2025. As the price of Office 2016 is low a lot of clients are going for this version. We see big entities of more than 50,000 employees buying Office 2016. We see Google & AWS helping clients to run their infrastructure on Microsoft technology, bringing Relicensed software to their hosting platform bought before October 2019, so clients can run these installations for a much lower price. Again, Microsoft has created a rule to block this competition, so I would not be surprised if Google and AWS do not challenge them in court, at least in the EU.  

3. What should organisations do in 2023 to make the most of software relicensing?

Customers on Microsoft 365 should really use our Hybrid model and take a look at their users and use our Excel tool to optimise which of their users could benefit from working with a relicensed Office version (2016, 2019 or even 2021) and save at least 30% of their cost. Microsoft will again be increasing its prices by up to 20%, so it is amazing in a crisis situation in Europe that companies do not take advantages of this opportunity. Again, this shows how much power Microsoft has, and how strong a channel it has too. 

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