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Rental software helps with fluctuating order situation
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Conventional software licences involve high maintenance costs
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80 per cent all of companies are over-licensed
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Hamburg, February 6th 2007 –
Most companies in Germany subscribe to software applications they do not actually use in the running of their business. An estimated 80 per cent of IT departments have unused licences at their disposal. This applies chiefly to small and medium-sized businesses. The application of alternative usage concepts can, however, prevent over-licensing. One solution, for example, is offered by use-related SaaS models. SaaS stands for "software as a service” and enables companies to rent business software instead of buying the full version from the producer as a licensee. The IT service provider novomind completed development of such a product in March 2006. With the e-mail management system novomind iMail™, a company can hire software capacities as it needs them without having to purchase a full licence.
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Problems with licence-linked software arise chiefly when organisational changes take place within a company. This is all the more annoying when some of the company’s licences are no longer needed when the restructuring of business processes is complete. Such a waste of IT resources can also prove very expensive. In addition to the software purchase price, namely, there’s the additional cost of maintenance to be considered, which totals an annual 15 to 25 per cent of the purchase price. With SaaS solutions, on the other hand, the cost of maintenance and updates remains with the service provider. What’s more, the user company does not need to set up its own IT infrastructure because hardware and system implementation are outsourced. As a result, capacities are created in the IT department that can be used for strategic projects. A further bonus is that no capital need be tied up in company-owned systems. This pays off particularly in the case of business software, where budget savings of between 30 and 80 per cent can
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With on-demand solutions, businesses always have state-of-the-art technology at their disposal. This means that customers can, for example, already take advantage of the very latest developments, such as novomind iMail™ on demand 2.0. As the new version is self-learning, new categories can be quickly trained within a very short time by means of statistical text recognition.
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Some companies do, however, have certain reservations about on-demand solutions as they are wary of passing on sensitive tracking data. This applies especially to online retailers. Such reservations are, however, unfounded as the security of customer and company data is contractually guaranteed. Confidence in software as a service (SaaS) seems to be growing not least for this reason. Estimates expressed by the market research institute Gartner predict that by 2011 some 25 per cent of all software could be developed on the basis of the SaaS model. At present, the market share of SaaS solutions in the business software market is 5 per cent of total turnover. The IT market observer IDC expects worldwide expenditure on SaaS to increase by an annual 21 per cent over the next few years and that total spending will exceed 10 billion dollars in the year 2009.
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novomind AG is exhibiting at CallCenterWorld in the Estrel Convention Center Berlin, hall 5, stand A2 from 27 February until 1 March 2007. Among the products the IT service provider will be presenting is version 5.0 of the multichannel-capable software solution novomind Self Service Suite™.
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novomind is a software developer in Hamburg and the fastest-growing company in the field of electronic customer communications and mail management. As the leading provider of innovative solutions for digital customer communications, novomind AG provides software for service-oriented and personalised customer dealings. The software not only optimises efficiency in customer administration significantly, it also gives the user a faster return on investment. The portfolio of the Products division includes the novomind Self-Service Suite™. The software package contains all the communication modules necessary for a customer service centre on a central knowledge basis: e-mail management, virtual customer consulting and systems for interactive, real-time communication. The novomind AG Services division implements complex e-business applications. More than 40 major companies have already decided in favour of novomind technology, among them Citibank, Otto, Yello Strom and the German pension institution Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund. Club Bertelsmann, EnBW and Mexx as well as public-sector users, such as the German Bundestag (parliament) and the German Department of Trade and Industry, have already successfully introduced novomind systems to optimise their customer communications, turnover and PR.
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