Discount-Licensing Limited Blog

Dear Client,

On the 31st December 2020, the United Kingdom (UK) formally left the European Union (EU). A withdrawal agreement (‘Treaty’) was agreed and the following summarises the key facts concerning how that Treaty affects the trade of pre-owned software transactions between the UK and the EU:

Recently Microsoft have confirmed they will be providing a new on-site/perpetual version of their ever-popular Office platform. Given the company has made concerted efforts to push users into a more subscription-based model, what does this announcement mean for the current and future state of perpetual software licences?

Discount Licensing are pleased to see that Microsoft are continuing to take action against rogue vendors.

In October 2019, Microsoft announced that it would be suing the German company Lizengo for illegally selling Windows and Office licence keys at heavily discounted prices. The keys, which were sold as gift cards through the popular German supermarket chain Edeka, came under suspicion when customers began querying their suspiciously low prices.

With Microsoft ending extended product support for Office 2010 in October, organisations that are still using this version may believe their only migration path is to the subscription based Office365. Nevertheless, there is a more cost-effective solution that most conventional Microsoft Resellers don’t talk about: pre-owned perpetual licensing. This option can provide a more up-to-date Office suite for only slightly more than an annual Office 365 subscription.

As an IT manager, you are always under pressure to deliver more capability, greater speeds, and less downtime across your network, which means keeping up with the latest technology. But with software manufacturers moving their customers to a subscription model, your latest upgrade often lies in the cloud with products like Office 365, AZURE, or AWS, leaving you with your old on premise licences that you no longer need. In the past, these were money down the drain, but what if you could recoup some of the first year of your new subscription fees by selling your now redundant, old software? With Discount Licensing, you can!

A large number of academic institutions are in possession of old software licences that they either have forgotten about or presume are not worth anything, but did you know that they could actually be resold back to a vendor for a reasonable price?

If your academic institution is sitting on unused volume licences, this can be a valuable asset that you can sell on to a trustworthy vendor to recoup some of your original costs.

Since the UK – and much of Europe – went into lockdown, many businesses have been temporarily closing or seen their revenues impacted. As a result, businesses are being forced to cut costs and to look for new ways to save money.

As software is often business critical, buyers are searching the internet for the best deals but it is important to know what to look for first. There are times when the cheapest option isn’t the best!

Whether you are looking to upgrade your office suite or simply maintaining compliance the cost of software licensing can be expensive. A conventional Microsoft reseller will automatically tell you that the most cost-effective way to licence your business correctly is to buy Office 365 or Azure and move away from on-premise perpetual licensing to a subscription cloud-based solution.

When a 24/7 service provider decided it was time to refresh their Office 2013 Standard, they looked towards the Cloud. Being a subscription, it would be Opex rather than Capex expenditure so would possibly be easier to get approved internally. They had observed that other decision-makers in their industry were making the switch to Microsoft Cloud that led them to think that the Cloud was a more cost-effective option for their 4000 seats.

At Discount Licensing, we buy and sell pre-owned, perpetual software licences, working closely with a variety of large businesses across Europe. Trading in your surplus software licences or purchasing pre-owned ones can help you save a significant amount of money for your business.

Pre-owned, perpetual software licences can offer excellent value to a business looking to maximise its savings. When it comes to perpetual software licence resellers, they must abide by the Software Directive 2009.