How to cut software costs in the economic downturn

training, something that Oracle has been agreeing to do, Colon said.

Menefee said he has found that, in general, vendors try to avoid giving buyers discounts on their core applications whenever possible. But they're often willing to discount add-on modules or even throw them in for free, he said. They've also become open to doing "a lot more legwork" on things such as evaluating Schumacher's business processes and how the use of software could save the company money, Menefee said.

For their part, users should consider things that they would be willing to trade away as part of the bargaining process, or agree to do for vendors -- for instance, appearing on trade show panels or talking about a product to the media. "You've got to be more clever in how you negotiate what you give and what you get," Geisman said.

5) Consider new types of licensing agreements

Another possibility is pushing your vendor to tweak or overhaul their software licenses for you, as in the case of Colon's retailer client. That could involve adding a cloud-based subscription option to an existing perpetual-use license, or pushing a vendor to adopt concurrent-user licensing.

Sixty-nine percent of the 78 IT managers who responded to the Acresso/SIIA survey said they preferred the concurrent-user approach over per-seat or per-processor licenses. Meanwhile, 70% of the vendors that were surveyed said they expected concurrent-user licensing to be one of their main pricing models by 2010.

Usage-based pricing models also may be on the rise. Altair Engineering Inc., a maker of product life-cycle management (PLM) applications, is among the vendors that have adopted token-based, pay-per-use licensing schemes that let end users within a company share a pool of software licenses.

Tecosim GmbH, a Russelsheim, Germany-based provider of computer-aided engineering services, has used Altair's token system for the past five years. Juergen Veith, Tecosim's managing director, said the tokens cover the use of Altair's own PLM software as well as third-party products that are integrated with it.

The token system "gives us a lot of flexibility," Veith said. "It lets us use the best software for each particular job." He also likened Altair's licensing approach to shareware policies, saying it allows Tecosim's workers to try out new products for very little cost. And the use of the tokens is saving the company money, Veith said, although he didn't disclose any hard numbers.

6) Find less expensive, nearly equivalent alternatives

Manhattan Home Finance LLC, a mortgage lender in Manhattan Beach, Calif., was locked into Lotus Notes for e-mail but desperately wanted to adopt Microsoft's SharePoint Server software for document storage and collaboration, said Nader Chahine, branch manager at the JPMorgan Chase & Co. affiliate.

Chahine found a product from Mainsoft Corp. that provides connectivity between SharePoint and Notes for $125 per user, enabling Manhattan Home Finance to avoid a lengthy and expensive migration to an all-Microsoft stack while giving its employees all of the features they needed.

If the problem is high maintenance costs, look to a third-party support vendor, Fauscette said. Or, he added, if operational costs and systems management hassles are getting you down, consider dumping your on-premises software for Web-hosted offerings.

7) Smaller vendors may be the most flexible -- and risky

During downturns, IT buyers often pare their vendor lists, starting with the smaller ones. But that is where the best bargains often can be had, said Fauscette, who noted that start-ups and emerging vendors may face a half-dozen similar competitors or have a need for cash to fuel their operations.

On the other hand, overeagerness on the part of a small vendor may be a warning sign. Fauscette said he'd be leery of doing