Why the same software costs more in Brisbane than in Boston

Australian companies are still paying 20-40% more for the same software as their US and European counterparts. The Government investigated this over a decade ago. Not much changed.

In 2013, Parliament summonsed executives from Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe to explain the premium. The inquiry received 133 submissions and held 8 public hearings. The finding: an average 50% price premium on software sold to Australian buyers. Cloud licensing has narrowed the gap since then, partly because per-seat pricing makes regional markups harder to hide. But for enterprise agreements, ERP maintenance, and cloud commitment deals, the premium persists.

Three reasons you're overpaying

Enterprise software pricing isn't like buying hardware off a shelf. There's no sticker price. Every deal is negotiated, and the starting point is whatever the vendor thinks you'll accept. That starting point is higher in Australia for three structural reasons.

Nobody shows you what others pay. Your Microsoft EA renewal quote arrives with no context about what a similar organisation in Amsterdam or Chicago is paying for the same licences. You're negotiating blind, and the vendor knows it.

Your reseller earns more when you spend more. If your MSP manages your licensing, they earn a margin on every licence sold. A lower price for you means a lower margin for them. The person advising you on your software spend is financially incentivised for you to spend more, not less.

The renewal lands, someone signs it, and life goes on. Most organisations don't have a dedicated software procurement function. It lands with IT or finance, nobody has benchmark data, and the vendor's opening offer becomes the final price. Vendors plan for this. They build the expected discount into their opening position and hope you don't push back.

The numbers your vendor hopes you never see

The parliamentary inquiry found Adobe products were 42% more expensive in Australia. Microsoft admitted at the hearing that they were charging what Australians "could bear." The Singapore Government was paying roughly 50% less than the Australian Government for the same Microsoft products.

After the inquiry, the Australian Government renegotiated its Microsoft volume sourcing arrangement and saved $100 million. That was government-scale leverage. Most private sector organisations don't have it. But the pricing dynamics are the same.

If you're renewing an Enterprise Agreement, a Salesforce contract, or a security platform like Palo Alto or Okta without independent benchmark data, you're likely leaving money on the table.

Cloud helped. But not enough.

Cloud licensing has made some pricing more transparent. Per-seat SaaS products are harder to mark up regionally because the list price is often published. But enterprise agreements, volume commitments, and consumption-based cloud deals (Azure, AWS) are still negotiated behind closed doors. That's where the premium persists, and that's where the savings are.

The other thing that hasn't changed: most Australian organisations still negotiate their software renewals without independent pricing data. The vendor sends a quote, someone signs it, and the cycle repeats. The information asymmetry that the parliamentary inquiry identified in 2013 is still the default for most enterprise software buyers in Australia.

The fix is simpler than you think

The fix isn't complicated. It's the same thing the Government did after the inquiry: get independent benchmark data before you negotiate. We've seen this pattern across dozens of Australian organisations. The vendor offers a discount that looks generous until you compare it to what the same vendor charges in Amsterdam or Boston.

That's what we do at Donnish. We work with Adept Technologies to bring global pricing benchmarks to Australian enterprise software buyers. No reseller targets. No margin on your licences. We negotiate on your behalf and our fee is a percentage of verified savings only. If we don't save you money, you pay nothing.

The average saving across our engagements is 19.5%. For an organisation spending $1 million a year on software, that's $195,000. Every year. On the same products, from the same vendors, with the same support arrangements in place.