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Facing a trying economy and decreasing new license revenue, enterprise software vendors are turning to more frequent licence audits to turn up missing revenue.

Plenty of companies sell proprietary software: Microsoft, Apple and Oracle, for example. And many companies, such as Red Hat and IBM, make money by selling support, hosting or consulting for open-source software. But what's less known is that companies can release their software as open-source while also selling a commercial version of the same product.

One of the most common ways businesses waste money is buying software that will never be used, but how much money exactly is being thrown down the drain in this manner?

CIOs looking to move existing software assets into the cloud but unsure about the licensing arrangements should leverage credits and other transfer services to minimise the impact, says one of the designers of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.

Financial management software company Reckon Limited (ASX:RKN) has extended its licensing deal for the Quicken range in Australia to cover a hosted online version

For decades, software buyers have been engaged in an "arranged marriage" type of relationship with software vendors: too much tradition, too little choice and a partnership of unequals from a deal's beginning. Typically, these deals had two key variables: the number of seat licenses (volume) a company purchased and the amount that the software publisher was willing to discount the purchase price, which was linked back to the volume.

Open-source software is an increasingly popular software development and distribution model that may spread further in the face of financial constraints in our current economy. With publicly available source code generally offered without charge, it is tempting to look to open source for potentially significant cost savings in this time of need.