A recent report which was jointly prepared by IDC and Flexera, reveals that organisations form deep-seated opinions about software vendors based on a wide spectrum of criteria – factors that vendors should take note and be aware of as they develop, launch and support their products.
In the enterprise survey, 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 including Adobe, CA, Citrix, EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com, Symantec and VMWare who collectively represent almost 50 percent market share or more than USD 200 billion in software spend.
The vendor garnering the most “Strongly Agree” or “Agree” responses won the Customer Choice Award for that particular category. Likewise, the vendor in each category garnering the most “Strongly Disagree” or “Disagree” responses lost for that category.
EMC won the “easy to work” category after 91 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that EMC was easy to work with. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 43 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
The survey also asked which vendor’s applications were easy to manage, apply patches, maintain and upgrade with VMware coming out on top with 91 percent of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing its applications were easy to manage, apply patches, maintain and upgrade. It also came out on top with 93 per cent of respondents agreeing VMware’s applications were easy to understand, manage usage as well as spend. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 35 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
Almost 90 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that HP’s licensing rules were easy to understand, making it easy to maintain compliance. Citrix came up fairly close 89.6 percent. Once again, Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 42.9 per cent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
Eighty-eight per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that Citrix licensing rules around mobile, virtualisation and the cloud would better facilitate their migration to those environments. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 45 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
Citrix picked up another coup with 94 percent agreeing they rarely faced software license compliance audits. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 35 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
Respondents (93 percent) agreed they were 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.
While 87 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that Citrix offered reasonably priced software that provided good ROI. Oracle scored lowest in this category, with 44 percent of respondents disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.
Amy Konary, Research Vice President, IDC, said that the impact that enterprise software had on an organisation went beyond a simple question of whether it delivered the desired business outcome.
“Applications require ongoing effort and cost to manage, support and maintain throughout the lifecycle of the license. The ease with which organisations can support those applications, and partner with their application providers during the process has a dramatic impact on vendors’ favourability ratings,” she added.
There were 147 enterprise respondents that participated in the vendor rating questions.
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