$12.3 billion spent on unused software in U.S. organizations.

By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 21 April 2011, 20:19 IST   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: Organizations annually spend a lot of money on the maintenance of unused software which eventually become a shelfware product for the companies. The money that is shelled out by organizations sums up to a huge amount. In U.S. and U. K., the amount comes up to $15.3 billion, where U.S. alone is $12.3 billion. The study comes as an eye opener which shows that 1E, a software vendor, is trying to sell new software called AppClarity, which helps companies identify and eliminate software waste. A software efficiency report was unveiled by 1E as well as the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers and the Federation Against Software Theft which mention that IT companies are spending money on the unused software. Employees from IT firms who were questioned said that there is more than $100 million worth of installed software in each PC which is unused along with the software licenses that become shelfware due to non-usage. Report show that organizations pay 20percent of the cost software vendors for annual maintenance services. If you take 20percent spent on unused software on a user's PC, and 20percent spent on new licenses it adds up to the total cost on wasted software licenses per year. Multiply that amount by the 108 million, regular business PC users in the U.S., and that comes out to $12.3 billion. The report also mentions that the main factor for the increase in the amount of unused software is that license may be pilled up with the vendors. Negotiating with them might help in an exchange in refunds or new services. But few organizations don't seem to do so.