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My experience is that this largely depends on the procurement practices of the company and whether or not your price range is low enough to be below discretiona

My experience is that this largely depends on the procurement practices of the company and whether or not your price range is low enough to be below discretionary expense limits. The greatest feature of SaaS has been the ability to take a 50k software package and make it a 500/month subscription that people who actually need it did not have to go through the official procurement process and could simply expense it. From the orgs where I worked, $500 to $1000 per month seemed to be the usual limit for expense items, depending by company size and the position of the person expensing it. CTOs typically can get away with a lot more...

smackfu 12y ago
Software procurement also tends to get hung up on EULAs because someone decided they want a fancy indemnification section that that lawyers at EnterpriseCorp don't want to agree to.
- sologoub 12y ago
  That, a long with many many other things that become a matter of getting a rubber-stamp from some stakeholder that is protecting a fiefdom, but doesn't really have anything to do with why that software is being bought. Although, legal review is always a good idea to make sure you understand what you are agreeing to.
- eitally 12y ago
  Just to use an example fresh in my mind... we're a Google Apps customer and bought a bunch of Lucidchart licenses to help wean people off Visio. One of the things Lucidchart does that, if we had known about it beforehand, we'd have written into our terms, is that they refuse to delete accounts even after a person's Google account is deleted, so we end up paying for licenses for terminated employees unless we physically add Lucidchart as a checklist item in our termination process, and then pay a guy to go do the needful and de-allocate it. Lucidchart is cheap by comparison to lots of things, but managing licenses is a pita (and they are by no means the only offender).
  - outworlder 12y ago
    > and then pay a guy to go do the needful I've seen that sentence several times in different contexts. Is it in current US usage?
    - smackfu 12y ago
      Only among people who deal with Indian software engineers, in my experience.
      - eitally 12y ago
        Right, and I meant it as such. Quite a few of our support staff are based in India.

smackfu 12y ago

Software procurement also tends to get hung up on EULAs because someone decided they want a fancy indemnification section that that lawyers at EnterpriseCorp don't want to agree to.

sologoub 12y ago
That, a long with many many other things that become a matter of getting a rubber-stamp from some stakeholder that is protecting a fiefdom, but doesn't really have anything to do with why that software is being bought. Although, legal review is always a good idea to make sure you understand what you are agreeing to.
eitally 12y ago
Just to use an example fresh in my mind... we're a Google Apps customer and bought a bunch of Lucidchart licenses to help wean people off Visio. One of the things Lucidchart does that, if we had known about it beforehand, we'd have written into our terms, is that they refuse to delete accounts even after a person's Google account is deleted, so we end up paying for licenses for terminated employees unless we physically add Lucidchart as a checklist item in our termination process, and then pay a guy to go do the needful and de-allocate it. Lucidchart is cheap by comparison to lots of things, but managing licenses is a pita (and they are by no means the only offender).
- outworlder 12y ago
  > and then pay a guy to go do the needful I've seen that sentence several times in different contexts. Is it in current US usage?
  - smackfu 12y ago
    Only among people who deal with Indian software engineers, in my experience.
    - eitally 12y ago
      Right, and I meant it as such. Quite a few of our support staff are based in India.