What’s happening in vendor management? Beltug Vendor Observatory insights

In October 2024, we launched our Beltug Vendor Observatory as a proof of concept (PoC), bringing members together to explore the evolving strategies, licensing models and practices of specific IT vendors. Our members’ engagement and feedback on these sessions confirmed the value of a dedicated forum where user members can exchange experiences, identify trends, and gain insights into vendor behaviour and vendor management.

The first post-PoC meeting was held on 18 June 2025. Following a Market Watch update from Leadout, the participants broke into smaller groups for interactive roundtable discussions. Takeaways from the event included:

Microsoft

• There is a shift away from Enterprise Agreements (EAs), with a push towards Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). This is especially true for smaller organisations. But CSP offerings do not all offer the same value and flexibility, so it is critical to compare them.
• Participants see GitHub Copilot as ‘beneficial’, but acknowledge the need to focus on user awareness and training.
• They find that the current reporting capabilities on Copilot usage are insufficient.
• They have concerns around service bundling, and would like to discuss the ongoing deals involving Microsoft Dynamics with their peers.

Hyperscalers

• The discussions revealed renewed interest in building or maintaining in-house data centre capabilities and evaluating EU-based cloud provider alternatives.
• The organisations are considering alternatives to VMware and assessing the impact of container adoption, which often requires redesign of legacy applications.
• They highlight that multi-cloud environments are costly and complex.

Open-source software (OSS) licence management

• IT procurement and software asset management communities tend to have a limited awareness of open-source software (OSS). Rising software costs and increased cost control initiatives are driving greater interest, however.
• There are risks to adopting OSS:
  • The support communities are smaller.
  • Governance requires cross-functional collaboration.
  • There is limited knowledge on which OSS libraries are reliable, which creates additional risks.
• Regulatory attention is increasing, especially in financial sectors.

Financial operations (FinOps)

• The participants are aware of the increasing importance of Financial Operations (FinOps), but none of their organisations has a dedicated or active FinOps in place.
• Ignoring FinOps raises some specific risks. In addition to increased costs around IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, the limited view of cost drivers and governance makes it harder to predict and control those costs. Furthermore, within the new trend to order software via the marketplace linked to the IaaS/PaaS providers (AWS and Azure marketplace), critical elements such as terms & conditions, unit prices and discount prices are unclear and difficult to manage.
• FinOps, they agree, should go beyond managing PaaS/IaaS, to include SaaS components as well.
• Several of the organisations give the FinOps responsibilities to the CSPs or software resellers, which creates a new conflict in the market by incentivising optimisation.

Broadcom

• The participants were unable to identify many compelling alternatives to VMware. Those that were identified have significant drawbacks. For example, Red Hat OpenShift is seen as too container-centric, while Microsoft Hyper-V lacks advanced functionalities that larger enterprises need, although it may be a suitable solution for smaller organisations.
• Some highlighted concerns included price increases after short-term renewals, and the use of virtual machines as the sole metric for migration feasibility.
• Negotiation tactic: the participants discussed reaching out informally to resellers to gain an understanding of margin structures and to identify cost levers.

SAP

The discussions around SAP were rather limited in this session. However, there were some valuable takeaways:

• Opinions vary on how difficult it is to negotiate with SAP.
• But there was agreement that while local integrators excel in execution, they may lack a strategic or enterprise-wide vision.

Oracle

• The general sentiment at the roundtable was that Oracle Database doesn’t meet their needs, and some specified that they are considering or even pursuing migration away from it.
• There is also an interest in phasing out Java, which one participant’s organisation has already done. At the same time, there was limited awareness around the table about current Java licensing implications.

The next Beltug Vendor Observatory will focus on Microsoft and tech sovereignty.