(P) "You can save up to 60% when buying software", says the CEO of Software Deals

Software Deals is a company that sells both new and secondary software and has been on the market for 10 years now. It operates on 10 European markets and entered the Romanian one 2 years ago. The market share grew tremendously quickly, so let’s ask the CEO of the company, what was the key to success.

An interview with Jakub Šulák, the CEO of Software Deals Q: First of all, can you please explain what exactly is secondary software and why do you think the company became successful in Romania?

Simply put, secondary software stands for licenses that aren’t needed by their owners anymore. They usually come from companies that went out of business or just want to switch to some other software, so their current licenses become redundant. A big advantage of secondary software is the fact, that it doesn’t lose quality over time. It’s not like when you buy a used car that needs repairs, software licenses remain the same no matter if they were used before or not.

As for the second question – I think we've succeeded because we have very good prices that are significantly lower than when you buy a completely new software. Also, we have a deep knowledge of what we do and we are able to help the customers even with more complicated problems. Plus, we provide many guarantees to our customers, so they know that everything they buy is always 100% legal.

Q: Which customers buy the most software products from your company?

Most of our products are bought by small and medium sized businesses. Some of our clients are bigger – like banks and corporations for example. They are interested in how much they can save when buying software from us. We offer very attractive

quantity discounts and project prices

, that can save companies a very significant amount of costs, so that raises their interest.

Our software is also bought by consumers, who are looking for software they would like to use at home, or at school, as the prices are considerably lower than the regular market prices.

Q: You mentioned legality earlier. Is selling ‘used’ software truly legal?

Yes, it is. We actually get the question about the legality of our products quite a lot. But the law is clear in this case. The judgment of the European Court of Justice in the UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp. case from 2012 says, that an author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licenses and that the exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program is exhausted on its first sale. This judgment was very important because it created a legal framework for the whole European Union, which is applied in all member states (including Romania). What’s also important to know is, that the license must come from the European Union, if it comes from other countries, you can’t legally resell it.