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>When reducing expenses becomes a priority, SaaS contracts get evaluated very closely. Unnecessary seats are removed. Contracts are re-negotiated. Income for Sa

>When reducing expenses becomes a priority, SaaS contracts get evaluated very closely. Unnecessary seats are removed. Contracts are re-negotiated. Income for SaaS companies like Confluent drop rapidly, and they may continue to drop more. This has been a long time coming. Some of the numbers I have been seeing for these contracts are truly mindblowing for the value delivered. The days of gouging enterprise on these random non-critical SaaS integrations is probably over. The one that still really gets me is Slack. Even medium sized companies are paying millions per year for a glorified IRC client. It just doesn't add up.

claytonjy 4y ago
Slack is an interesting one. Suppose you're a company spending a lot on it, too much. What are your options? Replacing slack with a comparable like Teams or Gchat is at least a step back in user-friendliness that will be grumbled about by engineers and others, and if you use a lot of integrations there might be significant switching costs. Moving away from instant messaging as a communication pattern sounds great to me, but good luck convincing folks to change company culture that significantly.
- WookieRushing 4y ago
  It’s millions a year and ms teams is near free. In a cost cutting environment this is near perfect.
  - claytonjy 4y ago
    How big of a team costs that much? Looks like the highest listed price is $180/person/year before it becomes "call us" pricing. Im sure that enterprise plan can get expensive, but even at $500/person/year that's at least 2000 users. I'd hope there's lots of things higher on the list of effective cost savings before trying to migrate that many users, and integrations, and history. Such migrations are happening and will continue to happen, but I expect most will go about as well as the one discussed in a sibling comment.
- progman32 4y ago
  This is exactly what's happening at a previous employer. We used slack for near a decade with tons of integrations. It's now being unceremoniously ripped out because Teams is "free". Will probably cost them more than they're saving from the contract just because of the migration cost.
- varjag 4y ago
  Nah noone's going to make a fuss out of it when people get axed left and right.
alephnerd 4y ago
+1 on this. I know for a fact at a couple F100 organizations, CFOs now want final sign-off on contracts valued around $20k-30k/year and above, whereas before that would be left to a VP. There is a lot of belt tightening happening

claytonjy 4y ago

Slack is an interesting one. Suppose you're a company spending a lot on it, too much. What are your options? Replacing slack with a comparable like Teams or Gchat is at least a step back in user-friendliness that will be grumbled about by engineers and others, and if you use a lot of integrations there might be significant switching costs. Moving away from instant messaging as a communication pattern sounds great to me, but good luck convincing folks to change company culture that significantly.

WookieRushing 4y ago
It’s millions a year and ms teams is near free. In a cost cutting environment this is near perfect.
- claytonjy 4y ago
  How big of a team costs that much? Looks like the highest listed price is $180/person/year before it becomes "call us" pricing. Im sure that enterprise plan can get expensive, but even at $500/person/year that's at least 2000 users. I'd hope there's lots of things higher on the list of effective cost savings before trying to migrate that many users, and integrations, and history. Such migrations are happening and will continue to happen, but I expect most will go about as well as the one discussed in a sibling comment.
progman32 4y ago
This is exactly what's happening at a previous employer. We used slack for near a decade with tons of integrations. It's now being unceremoniously ripped out because Teams is "free". Will probably cost them more than they're saving from the contract just because of the migration cost.
varjag 4y ago
Nah noone's going to make a fuss out of it when people get axed left and right.

alephnerd 4y ago

+1 on this. I know for a fact at a couple F100 organizations, CFOs now want final sign-off on contracts valued around $20k-30k/year and above, whereas before that would be left to a VP. There is a lot of belt tightening happening