Poor planning cost Enterprises unwanted Millions Every Year Date:   Thursday , August 30, 2012 Vincent Smyth is the General Manager - EMEA Sales at Flexera Software, one of the leading providers of strategic solutions for Application Usage Management. The company helps application producers and their customers strategically manage application usage to achieve continuous compliance, optimized usage and maximized value. As the pioneer and industry leader of strategic Application Usage Management solutions, Flexera Software has grown to become a large and successful company — a solidly profitable, top 200 software company with over 80,000 customers and market leadership in each of its chosen markets. In his current role, Smyth manages the geographical businesses globally. With a career in software industry spanning 27 years, Smyth has held sales management responsibilities for Business Objects, PTC and Computer Associates; before joining Flexera four years ago. In his role as the GM, he has been known to consistently deliver on revenue targets and improve customer satisfaction. Prior to this, he was the regional Vice President of sales for Flexera Software's EMEA business. Importance of Operations in India In the past years, Flexera's businesses in India have been fairly tactical and the company has made a strategic decision to invest resources significantly in the Indian market. The operations have begun and we are in the process of establishing a legal entity. The company has already hired about 120 employees under a partnering company in Bangalore, fully dedicated to the cause of the organization. Increasing the sales team quite substantially within 12 months is one of our top priorities. Key Trends to Initialize Operations The largest companies in India spend a significant amount of their IT budget on software applications, licenses and maintenance. The financial burden on the companies due to software requirements is increasing at a steady pace annually. The first noticeable trend is the requirement for the firms to reduce their costs significantly. Secondly, the technological trends in the Indian industry are leading to an increasing complexity which causes major challenges in the field of expenditure and budget control for the sizeable companies. The move to virtualization from a data centric/application server is a prominent scenario as it gives good flexibility for the companies in areas of hardware and operational costs. Most importantly, it leads to a significant increase in complexity from a software licensing perspective which has been a major cause of concern for the Indian firms. Another critical trend is of the organization's responsibilities to support mobile workers and employees who want to carry their personal devices to the offices and to deal with problems in terms of unapt usage of software which is a criterion for worry in the industry. The final substantial progression noticeable is big software companies spending more time on audits for customers from a compliance perspective. Most firms are ill prepared to defend their position in terms of a software audit. Enterprise License Optimization in India Companies usually plan around five percent of their IT budgets on software, but some organizations end up spending millions of dollars which often is way above the setup mark. Our consultancy can help the companies in not making unwanted software purchases. As organizations in India turn global, they focus on standardization, consolidation and rationalization of their software. The companies can benefit greatly if they just avoid buying less practical software. The planning of licenses needed to support the individuals of the respective company's businesses becomes a problem for organizations with a high turnover of staff. In this regard, Flexera has helped Indian firms with a substantial number of employees in realization of many financial saving routes. Promising Areas of Business BFSI, IT outsourcing, oil and gas industry have shown maximum traction in the past few years. For example, large oil companies spend enormous amounts on software and we guide them in not making unwanted purchases and help them save valuable money. Major Challenges 18 months ago, companies were self sustainable in terms of their software requisites. However, recently they had to endure audits from suppliers. The challenge eventually is to get optimization on the CIO's agenda as his noticeable priority. Strategies for the Indian Market We segregate the Indian markets roughly into four major divisions of companies. First, the firms which are based in India but provides service mainly to Europe and North America; second, set of companies are the large technology outsourcers which cater globally; third, Indian operations of other global companies and the fourth consisting of the medium companies in India. The main targets are the first two classifications. The glitches are a bigger problem for the large companies as compared to the midsized companies who do not recognize them as major issues. Global Revenue Strongholds The European and the North American regions is where Flexera gets maximum turnovers. Over the last two years, Flexera has invested considerably in India, China and Brazil. India is poised to be a major contributor to our growth over the coming years. (As told to Vignesh.A)