SPECIAL STORY FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE May 2022 59 hard to use and complex to maintain, requiring highly skilled IT staff. The high complexity usually requires high initial and annual costs due to maintenance. To understand the high price of the legacy software, we must define the term “total cost of ownership.” The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for enterprise software is the sum of all direct and indirect costs incurred by that software, making it a critical part of the ROI calculation. However, it is often ignored or woefully underestimated. The following costs define TCO: • License • Server hardware cost to run the application and users’ hardware cost to run client applications • Software maintenance • 3rd party software (Windows Server, Windows Domain, SQL database, security, and more) • Workforce cost to run the environment • Upgrade cost This is the old licensing model. Users require a clean and straightforward TCO model with no hidden costs. AFOS provides such a model with a simple licensing structure – customers can pay a monthly, annual, or 5-year license; support, maintenance, training, consultation, updates, and upgrades are all included in the price. NEXT-GEN FEED FORMULATION SOFTWARE’S BENEFITS No software/no hardware – no worries, is the motto of new-age cloud-based software. Therefore, it is usually provided as software-as-a-service with a monthly or yearly subscription. The software provider is responsible for hardware & software delivery and maintenance. Everything is run on the cloud, and all data is stored in the cloud. A user only has client software running in the web browser without any need for installation or maintenance. An example of new-age formulation software is AFOS. We have collected our 10-year experience from legacy AFOS standalone application, both in the software and domain worlds, and created this new formulation software using all the latest technologies and best practices. The benefits provided by this type of software are as follows: • Fully integrated web-based feed formulation available on any device and location. With AFOS, one can formulate from a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone, using Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, and Unix operating systems, from any device connected to the Internet. • Collaborative platform with a multi-user environment and advanced roles & responsibilities capabilities (“who-can-do-and-see-what”). The Advanced Admin application allows formula-
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