If you have redundant Microsoft software licenses that are sitting around doing nothing for your business, one of the best options available to you is to sell them.

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.

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.

IT giant Microsoft has been making headlines for the wrong reasons recently, after a new report has revealed that some 250 million of its customer records – spanning 14 years – have been exposed for all to see online without password protection.

The second-hand software market is booming as more and more businesses come to understand what an effective way it is to save money. Very few businesses don’t require some software to operate effectively while most are always looking for ways to save money without affecting operational performance. That’s what pre-owned software offers, effective software for a lot less money!

Many people liken pre-owned software to second-hand objects, assuming that there will be signs of usage - but this isn’t true. Pre-owned software is as good as new with every fresh install. There are no mechanical aspects and there are no moving parts, so there is no way to “wear out” a piece of software. As long as software is installed on the appropriate hardware, it will be as responsive, usable, and suitable for your business as ever – even if it has been used before.

This article was written by Rich Gibbons of ITAM Review and Noel Unwin of Discount Licensing.

In July 2012, the second-hand software market received a definitive answer from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) when it ruled that reselling intangible software was legal. The rights of the software vendor to control the resale of the software copy is ‘exhausted’ after the first sale of the copy (Exhaustion Principle). This precedent is encapsulated within the European Software Directive 2009.

Short answer: no. Buying and selling used software is now legally protected in Europe following the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling back in 2012 which enabled businesses to legally sell their disused software licence assets. The most important factor to bear in mind when purchasing used software licences is to use a reputable secondary reseller that can provide your business with the unique perpetual software licence agreement number (identifying the original Microsoft customer) and ownership documents. Perpetual used software does not expire or need renewing and will continue to be supported by the vendor in exactly the same way as new software licence customer enjoy. Unlike with the Cloud, used software businesses do not have to renew/install the latest software version when launched – used software clients can maintain a previous version of the software on its network.