Criteria for Acquiring Software Packages

Choosing software for a certain department or company is not just a matter of checking the prices. The real cost of a product includes the price of the software and the cost of implementing it as well. As I browse the net, I found this presentation by an international, award-winning author John Hedtke that shows how to identify the features you need, the features you want, and the features you don’t care about.

The presentation also discussed ways to determine other important selection criteria, such as the hardware and operating system requirements, the product’s interoperability with other departments, new and intermediate user training requirements, and the need for continuing product support. You’ll see how to create a list of selection criteria that accurately reflects your needs and priorities, evaluate the products that may fulfill your criteria, and make a selection. The presentation concluded with tips on evaluating the product’s appropriateness after you’ve been using it for a month or two.

Criteria for acquiring Software Packages:

1. Hardware and Operating System Requirements
2. Product's Interoperability with other Departments
3. New and Intermediate User Training Requirements
4. Need for Continuing Product Support
5. Price of the Software and the Cost of Implementing the Software

Hardware and Operating System. Acquiring software package needs examining performance. When you examine performance, a number of factors influence how much capacity a given hardware configuration will need in order to support a given application. The hardware capacity required to support your application depends on the specifics of the application and configuration. You should consider how each factor applies to your configuration and application. Choosing an Operating System considers the following factors; Stability and Robustness, Memory Management, Memory Leaks, Sharing Memory, Cost and Support, Discontinued Products and Operating System Releases. Selecting right hardware leads to great software performance, choosing hardware considers; I/O Performance, Memory, CPU and Bottlenecks (Solving Hardware Requirement Conflicts).

Product's Interoperability. Product's Interoperability with other Departments criteria defines the term Inter-operate, the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together. Interoperability is used to describe the capability of different programs to exchange data via a common set of exchange formats, to read and write the same file formats, and to use the same protocols. (The ability to execute the same binary code on different processor platforms is 'not' contemplated by the definition of interoperability.) The lack of interoperability can be a consequence of a lack of attention to standardization during the design of a program. Indeed, interoperability is not taken for granted in the non-standards-based portion of the computing world.

User Training. According to Jonathan Wu, a columnist in Information Management Online said that, Each software company that develops Business Intelligence (BI) applications offers training courses on their products. The goal of this standard BI training is to demonstrate the features and functionality of the application to the customers through lecture and lab exercises. Most companies that purchase a BI application will have users attend the standard training that is provided by the BI company because it is readily available and requires very little preparation or planning.

Product Support. Need for Continuing Product Support Offers a wide range of product and service solutions. This criteria will provide the end to end support you need to control costs and maximize value for your product returns. From returns management through fulfillment, channel remarketing or recycling, this criteria will support your specific product returns needs often at a substantial savings over other options.

Cost. Software licensing cost is among several major cost factors that must be considered when acquiring software packages. The real cost of a product includes the price of the software and the cost implementing it as well. The real cost of a product includes the price of the software and the cost of implementing it as well. Contributing to the overall cost of implementation are costs associated with; Computer hardware, Database platform, New System Maintenance, Old System Maintenance, Data Conversion services, Project management services, Technical training and User Training.

Reference:

• http://www.hedtke.com/
• http://perl.apache.org/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/
• http://www.google.com/