Application usage analytics provider SoftWatch has released the findings of a study of around 150,000 users, which found that the vast majority of Office licences were wasted.
The company said customers could save up to 90 percent on Microsoft licensing fees by switching to Google Apps.
SoftWatch analysed data from customers running its CloudIT assessment service, breaking users down into four groups: inactive users, viewers, light editors and heavy users. Users from the first three camps were classified as light users.
The threshold between heavy and light users came from the average daily time spent editing documents based on SoftWatch's recommended threshold of 12 minutes per day using Word and PowerPoint and eight minutes per day using Excel.
The study ran for three months to February 2014 spanning 148,500 users in 51 companies, including APAC.
It found that 68 percent of users across all applications were light users.
According to the report, "The fact that 68 percent of the users don't use any application heavily leads to a conclusion that this population can be moved to alternative cloud-based solutions rather easily and their Office licences should be decommissioned."
PowerPoint in particular was found to be underutilised; some 70 percent of PowerPoint users fell into the inactive or viewer camps.
"While Microsoft did a smart marketing move by bundling Office applications into one package, the study shows that the actual needs, in most cases, is for standalone applications," according to a company statement.
SoftWatch co-CEO Moshe Kozlovski said even the vendor itself was surprised at the findings.
"At the beginning we were a bit surprised. We knew people were not using their software... for many years the industry was talking about excessive licensing of about 15-20 percent, [but they were] talking about if you use it or not, they weren't talking about if you are using it but only lightly.
"Traditional asset management usually give you open and close. That is why when Gartner and IDC say 15-20 percent are excessive licences because they don't use it at all that is a true statement. But they never extended into the layers to show how people are using [software] very extensively for view-only," he added.
Kozlovski stressed it was a random study and there was "absolutely" no chance that the figures were skewed away from typical Microsoft Office users.
While Israel-based SoftWatch said it was independent of any vendors, it has partnered with Google Apps resellers to get its CloudIT and OptimizeIT products out to market, "Google Apps resellers are in the a niche to push into the market, that is why we decided to work with them. It doesn't mean we can't in the future make other decisions, but as a start up we need to focus," said Kozlovski. The vendor's partners include Cloud Sherpas, which is active in Australia and was recently named Google Enterprise Partner of the Year for third consecutive year. SoftWatch "expects to engage with most major Google Apps resellers in the near future".CRN asked Gartner for specific numbers on excessive licensing. While it couldn't point to any exact figures, Gartner's software asset management and procurement analyst, Guriq Sedha, said: "Organisations frequently find themselves in situations where they own many more licences than they are using, and in other cases they have implemented more than they own.
"Both situations are expensive and expose organisations contractually and financially. A robust software asset management and prudent planning for any software contract renewals can help address this situation."
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