Cost of SaaS Subscriptions. Cost of SaaS subscriptions reflects costs related to our SaaS offerings including salaries, employee benefits, third-party hosted infrastructure costs, and applicable overhead costs.
Cost of SaaS subscriptions increased by 7.7%, excluding the favorable foreign currency impact of 0.4%, in the second quarter of fiscal 2020 compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2019. At constant currency, this increase in SaaS costs wasin-line with our higher SaaS subscriptions revenues, including a 5.1 point increase related to higher third-party royalties and channel partner commissions, 1.9 points due to higher employee-related and overhead costs, primarily as a result of higher SaaS headcount in the current quarter compared to the second quarter last year, a 0.4 point increase related to higher hosting costs, and 0.3 points related to higher other costs of providing our SaaS subscriptions.
Cost of SaaS subscriptions for the first six months of fiscal 2020 increased by 9.5%, excluding the favorable foreign currency impact of 0.5%, compared to the first six months of fiscal 2019,in-line with higheryear-to-date SaaS subscriptions revenues. At constant currency, this increase was primarily due to a 5.6 point increase related to higher channel partner commissions and third-party royalties, an increase of 2.7 points due to higher employee-related and overhead costs, with our higher SaaS headcount, 0.5 point increase related to higher hosting costs, and an increase of 0.7 points related to higher other costs of providing our SaaS subscriptions.
Cost of Software License Fees. Cost of software license fees reflects costs related to the sale of our perpetual or term software licenses including royalties to third parties, channel partner commissions and other software delivery expenses, and applicable overhead costs. Our software solutions may include embedded components of third-party vendors for which a fee is paid to the vendor upon the sale of our products. In addition, we resell third-party products in conjunction with the license of our software solutions, which also results in a fee. We also sell our software solutions through our third-party channel relationships which require us to pay applicable commissions to our channel partners. The cost of software license fees is generally higher, as a percentage of revenues, when we sell products of third-party vendors. As a result, software license fees gross margins will vary depending on the proportion of third-party product sales and/or sales through our business partner channel in our revenue mix.
Cost of software license fees decreased by 12.0%, excluding the favorable foreign currency impact of 1.9%, in the second quarter of fiscal 2020 compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2019. At constant currency, this increase was primarily due to the decrease in software license fees in the quarter and the mix of perpetual licenses fees resulting in a 13.0 point decrease related to lower channel partner commissions, and a 0.4 point decrease from lower other delivery costs. These decreases were somewhat offset by a 1.4 point increase related to higher third-party royalties.
Cost of software license fees for the first six months of fiscal 2020 decreased by 0.5%, excluding the favorable foreign currency impact of 1.5%, compared to the first six months of fiscal 2019. At constant currency, the decrease was primarily due loweryear-to-date software license fees and the mix of perpetual licenses fees resulting in a 7.1 point decrease related to lower channel partner commissions and a 0.2 point decrease from lower other delivery costs which were somewhat offset by a 6.8 point increase related to higher third-party royalties.
Cost of Product Updates and Support Fees. Cost of product updates and support fees includes salaries, employee benefits, related travel, third-party maintenance costs associated with embedded andnon-embedded third-party products, related channel partner commissions, and the overhead costs of providing our customers product updates and support.
Cost of product updates and support fees decreased by 3.5%, excluding the favorable foreign currency impact of 1.3%, in the second quarter of fiscal 2020 compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2019. At constant currency, the decrease was primarily due to a 2.9 point decrease related to lower employee-related support and overhead costs, a net 0.2 point decrease related to lower channel partner commissions and third-party royalties, and 0.4 points related to lower professional fees and other support costs.
For the first six months of fiscal 2020, cost of product updates and support fees decreased by 0.5%, excluding the favorable foreign currency impact of 1.5%, compared to the first six months of fiscal 2019. At constant currency, theyear-to-date decrease was primarily due to a 1.3 point decrease in employee-related support and overhead costs, and 0.1 point related to lower professional fees and other support costs. These decreases were somewhat offset by a 0.9 point increase related to higher channel partner commissions and third-party royalties.
Cost of Consulting Services and Other Fees. Cost of consulting services and other fees includes salaries, employee benefits, third-party consulting costs, related travel, share-based compensation expense, and the overhead costs of providing our customers systems implementation and integration services, consulting, custom modification, hosting services, application managed services, and education and training services. Cost of consulting services and other fees also includes costs associated with our hardware business.
Cost of consulting services and other fees increased by 0.3%, excluding the favorable foreign currency impact of 2.1%, in the current quarter compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2019. At constant currency, cost of consulting services increased 0.8 points due to higher warranty costs and 0.2 points due to higher employee-related and overhead costs. These increases were somewhat offset by 0.4 points from lower billable contractor costs, and 0.3 points due to a decrease in other costs.
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