Vendor-Driven Software Upgrades Eat 28% of IT Budgets, Survey Finds

3-line summary

• A survey of more than 2,000 large US and UK companies by software-maintenance firm Origina, reported by Reuters, found that vendor-driven upgrades, migrations and licensing changes consume an average of 28% of software budgets-spending companies did not choose, but which vendors imposed.
• 95% of respondents said they had paid for vendor-driven upgrades they expected to make things worse, 80% said losing a major software vendor would severely disrupt their business, and 84% said senior engineering staff "always" or "frequently" spend time on vendor-mandated changes; the average annual cost of the most recent vendor-driven change was $12.87 million.
• 91% said they had scrapped working hardware in the past three years to meet vendor support deadlines, giving up an average of 1.65 years of remaining useful life; Origina CEO Tomas O'Leary said companies often accept the upgrades because "saying yes is often a rational response," with the burden heaviest for firms running older, entrenched technology stacks.

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