CIOs ally to beat software firms
Published: 30 Apr 2004 10:30 BST
How so?
For example, something as simple as an upgrade on one of your applications. You are forced to upgrade when your vendor drops support on something. But it could be that you have got something more important going on that year, like a strategic investment in customer relationship management [programs] that you would rather be devoting your resources to. But you are often forced to upgrade to a newer version of software.
Worse yet, if you have committed some portion of your company to run on a piece of software and that vendor changes direction, you are suddenly kind of out in the dark and, again, forced to go through, in this case, a re-platform, not even an upgrade. You are going to be forced to move and it just might not be your strategic priority at that time.
What you're describing here is the classic software maintenance model -- which requires companies to pay annual fees and continually upgrade in order to get technical support for the product. Is that model less than satisfactory?
Maintenance by itself of course is a good thing. You want maintenance, but really it comes down to, do you feel like you are getting value for your maintenance dollars? Certainly, we get great support from some of our companies. We get less-than-great support from others, and for some companies I do not feel good about the investment that we are making on an annual basis.
Which companies are those?
We are trying really hard to avoid vendor bashing on this thing because it is easy to characterise this as some kind of anti-software vendor initiative. That is not what we are about here. We are about, I think, restoring a stronger sense of control and getting more value for our IT investment.
Some software companies are saying that IT buyers have gained a greater position of power in the contract negotiations because of the technology downturn. They're saying that it's basically a buyer's market. Are you finding that to be true?
With the downturn there is a lot more pricing pressure out there, but I guess I have not personally seen any kind of change in the fundamental process. I just have not seen it.
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