<story><title>Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)</title><url>https://www.ibj.com/articles/73599-companies-fret-as-costs-soar-for-software-subscriptions</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SonicScrub</author><text>That number doesn&amp;#x27;t surprise me. Your quick $1000-$2000 estimate is probably accurate for a typical office worker, but the more specialized positions skew the average. I work in mechanical&amp;#x2F;aerospace engineering for a large company. A lot of the software we use is very specialized and very costly. Here&amp;#x27;s the yearly costs from the top 4 softwares I use based on a quick google search:&lt;p&gt;1) $35,000&lt;p&gt;2) $15,000&lt;p&gt;3) $10,000&lt;p&gt;4) $4,500&lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#x27;m costing the company ~$65,000 per year in software licenses alone.</text></item><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>Look, either it&amp;#x27;s worth it or it&amp;#x27;s not. Costs may be soaring, but companies wouldn&amp;#x27;t be buying them if they weren&amp;#x27;t providing more value than they cost. But:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;enterprise companies are spending an average of more than $10,000 per employee per year on software&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sorry but I can&amp;#x27;t wrap my head around this. Is that really accurate? Between Office and cloud and HR&amp;#x2F;payroll and a few other tools I can imagine &lt;i&gt;$1,000&lt;/i&gt;&amp;#x2F;year. And certain employees need SalesForce or Adobe CC or whatever which adds another, say, $500-2,000.&lt;p&gt;But I just cannot possibly imagine how an &lt;i&gt;average&lt;/i&gt; employee is using $10K worth of subscription services?! Does anyone else think this is accurate?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>analog31</author><text>Even for a typical office worker, based on my experience at a large company, there might be 10 to 20 enterprise apps that include:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  * Tracking work hours
  * Communicating within teams
  * Entering and managing yearly performance reviews
  * Managing IT tickets
  * Catching spyware, phishing, etc.
  * Key and click logging
  * Personality and other screenings for job candidates
  * Health insurance management
  * Jira being used outside of software development
  * Database for archiving HR announcements
  * Password management for the above
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
In general, the prosperity of a business is a balance of assets and liabilities, and a software purchase is both, since it involves a cost. Managers promote purchases based on a variety of factors relative to the business and their own personal ambitions. There&amp;#x27;s no magic that makes managers so brilliant in the face of a salesman that they only make beneficial decisions, or that purchases are inherently beneficial, just because the product is software.</text></comment>
<story><title>Companies fret as costs soar for software subscriptions (2019)</title><url>https://www.ibj.com/articles/73599-companies-fret-as-costs-soar-for-software-subscriptions</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>SonicScrub</author><text>That number doesn&amp;#x27;t surprise me. Your quick $1000-$2000 estimate is probably accurate for a typical office worker, but the more specialized positions skew the average. I work in mechanical&amp;#x2F;aerospace engineering for a large company. A lot of the software we use is very specialized and very costly. Here&amp;#x27;s the yearly costs from the top 4 softwares I use based on a quick google search:&lt;p&gt;1) $35,000&lt;p&gt;2) $15,000&lt;p&gt;3) $10,000&lt;p&gt;4) $4,500&lt;p&gt;So I&amp;#x27;m costing the company ~$65,000 per year in software licenses alone.</text></item><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>Look, either it&amp;#x27;s worth it or it&amp;#x27;s not. Costs may be soaring, but companies wouldn&amp;#x27;t be buying them if they weren&amp;#x27;t providing more value than they cost. But:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;enterprise companies are spending an average of more than $10,000 per employee per year on software&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sorry but I can&amp;#x27;t wrap my head around this. Is that really accurate? Between Office and cloud and HR&amp;#x2F;payroll and a few other tools I can imagine &lt;i&gt;$1,000&lt;/i&gt;&amp;#x2F;year. And certain employees need SalesForce or Adobe CC or whatever which adds another, say, $500-2,000.&lt;p&gt;But I just cannot possibly imagine how an &lt;i&gt;average&lt;/i&gt; employee is using $10K worth of subscription services?! Does anyone else think this is accurate?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Aeolun</author><text>But there would have to be 5 other workers for every you. I think it’s more likely that the number is around 1 in 200 for most enterprises. And maybe closer to 1 in 1000 for all enterprises combined.&lt;p&gt;Note: those numbers are pulled out of my ass.</text></comment>