An old friend of mine in the world of SAM contacted me about something very interesting just today.
He told me that a company (not his, but one where he knows the SAM people well) had over bought an excess of several million dollars worth of licenses from a vendor. They had noticed the discrepancy shortly after the deal concluded (but after the deal was concluded) and had reached an agreement with that vendor whereby they could resell a percentage of the licenses – with the vendor's permission, up to a certain dollar value limit – of any of the 70+ products of that vendor.
There are catches – the deal must be done by a certain date, the vendor must certify and agree the transfer – but really, this is an interesting position.
The vendor is being relatively "nice" here, they could have left the customer with the excess and told them that the over purchase was not their issue.
For 1E customers with operations in Europe this begs an interesting question. Can they leverage the licenses from reclaimed software in this way? If you have excess beyond the level of cover and you want to ensure you avoid additional new purchases over the next 12 months, instead of just canceling maintenance (if possible), could you monetize some of those licenses on the second-hand software market?
If you want to know more about what vendor and what products may be available – email me via Ask Sam. I can’t share details openly because of the sensitive nature of the data!