Businesses should take advantage of the current buyer's market for corporate software according to a new study by Forrester Research.

"The stars have aligned to produce a once-in-a-blue-moon buyer's market for enterprise software," Forrester said.

Licence costs for software have plummeted, tech talent is cheaper, key technical standards are as stable as they have ever been, and management has finally gotten a better grasp of the technology, the firm said in explaining the reasons for falling prices.

Enterprise software refers to any software used by a corporation, government agency, school, a not-for-profit, or any other similar organisation regardless of size. Enterprise software does not include games, word processors, spreadsheets, and accessories.

Forrester notes that the current slump in capital spending by businesses has led to more aggressive competition in pricing licence and maintenance contracts. Discounts of 40 percent to 50 percent are not "uncommon", Forrester reports.

Some vendors, like PeopleSoft and Siebel, sometimes even give away licences to their products, hoping to recoup the money by selling upgrades and services contracts.

The high cost of the "talent", the people who design, build, and staff software-based projects, has also fallen, especially in places like China and India. The cost of an entry-level programmer in China is 30 percent to 40 percent cheaper than one in Tokyo, London, or Chicago.

Outsourcing contact centre e-mail response duties to a supplier in India has saved some companies up to 40 percent, compared to running a similar service in the US. One such India-based outsourcer is Daksh (www.daksh.com), which has cleaned up on the trend to outsource service centres to India.

As software has become more stable due to increasing agreement on a critical mass of standards, companies are having to upgrade their systems less rapidly. Managers have also become smarter at choosing their company's enterprise software, having gone through a steep learning curve during the dot.com and consulting nightmare.

"The best-performing companies don't spend the most on IT - they spend smarter," Forrester notes.

For those companies deciding to shop for new enterprise software in the current market, Forrester advises management to begin with an analysis of the processes they want to computerise.

"Software investments should follow from a process-based planning phase not precede it," the firm advises. "For example, before investing in a marketing database, a retailer should detail the impact on merchandising decisions and specify how individual store managers will use the system to aid local marketing objectives." Managers should also be tougher negotiators with software vendors on pricing, aiming at rateable payments over the expected life span of the application. And, finally, managers should check what software the company has already bought before plunging into the corporate pocket. They might find they already have what they need. Lots of companies spent huge amounts on software licenses during the boom years (remember them?).

"Before building a case to spend six figures on a new contract, look around for shelfware that might apply to the business opportunity at hand," Forrester states.

True bargain shoppers should also consider buying secondhand software licences on the cheap from brokers like IPRecovery (www.iprecovery.com), which has an inventory of applications from vendors such as eGain, Manugistics, PeopleSoft, and Xchange.

IPRecover holds online auctions for the second-hand software.

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Microsoft has released a series of patches for its software, including a cumulative patch for Internet Explorer that the company classifies as "critical". If you previously have not patched the many vulnerabilities in Explorer then this is the time to do so, as the patch fixes all previously known flaws.

The patch also eliminates two newly discovered vulnerabilities involving Internet Explorer's cross-domain security model - which keeps sites from sharing your personal information if you happen to have two or more windows open while surfing the Internet.

"These flaws result in Internet Explorer because incomplete security checking causes Internet Explorer to allow one website to potentially access information from another domain when using certain dialog boxes," Microsoft explained.

Once the user has visited a web site set up to exploit the vulnerability, it would be possible for the attacker to run malicious script on your computer.

The patch applies to most versions of Windows and Explorer.

Another patch made available last week applies only to those with Windows XP. The patch fixes a problem with the Windows Redirector, which is used to access files on a local or remote network.

For example the Windows Redirector will handle the routing of information to and from a shared network. A vulnerability in the software could allow an attacker to cause the system to fail, or if the data was crafted in a particular way, could run code of the attacker's choice. Both patches are available at: www.microsoft.com/security/default.asp.

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lTech Tattle deals with issues concerning technology. Contact Ahmed at editoroffshoreon.com