ProCadIs.com: Cheapest Autodesk Products Online

Some software publishers have very high list pricing and then offer discounts between 80% - 90% more or less as standard; others only offer 10 or 20%. Why does this matter for second-hand software sales? The most obvious difficulty for a buyer of second-hand software is to purchase maintenance at affordable rates. The software publisher can attempt to discourage second-hand sales of their software licences by insisting on charging list price for maintenance and support. In the case of a software publisher that typically discounts by between 10% and 20%, this is not as much of a disincentive as in the case of a software vendor who typically discounts by 80% and 90%.

If the licence is being sold with a period of maintenance and support still to run, then this will obviously increase its value. Firstly, because during the maintenance period the buyer need not purchase maintenance. Secondly, because the buyer (or ProCADIS on the buyer's behalf) has time to negotiate with the software publisher in order to agree a reasonable price for a future maintenance term. Compared to requiring a maintenance contract immediately, this is a huge advantage to the buyer.

ProCADIS strives to reach agreements with software publishers. Our intention is to encourage software publishers to see second-hand software sales as an opportunity to expand their client base. Software licences that are no longer used provide no income for a software publisher, whereas a second-hand sale can give that licence a new lease of life, and gives the software publisher a new source of revenue from maintenance and support payments. By cooperating with software publishers, ProCADIS adds to the value to software licences by giving the buyers of that software confidence in acquiring licences with the approval of the software publisher.

Fore more information, please look at the section dedicated to partners on our website or contact us directly.

The value of the second-hand licence will be greatly enhanced by the presence of a third-party support provider. The market for third-party support on software is growing rapidly. Rimini Street, Spinnaker Support, Alui, Support Revolution and CedarCrestone offer support on many software products from top vendors, often with better SLAs than what the software publisher will offer. As a seller, being able to offer the buyer the possibility to purchase third party support will greatly increase the price a second-hand licence will achieve. ProCADIS can advise you on this and propose solutions via our partner network.

Stable software product which is relatively independent of the underlying operating system may not need regular updates. For example, a small company with a limited IT budget may be perfectly happy to purchase some second-hand licences for Microsoft Office 2016, and continue to use the software for five years or more without upgrading the software. If all that the employees in that company use is some basic word processing and spread sheet functionality, then their needs would be met with such a solution. Hence stable, consumer-orientated software is likely to achieve a price closer to the original cost of acquisition than a complex business application for these reasons.

Similar to the point above, buyers will be less likely to purchase software which is business critical, and for which it is desirable to have a trusting relationship with the software publisher. This is not to say that buying software second-hand excludes a positive relationship with the software publisher (especially where ProCADIS has partnership agreements in place). However, at the time of writing this FAQ, second-hand software is a relatively new concept which is disrupting software publisher's traditional business models.