Overview
- The Origina report released Tuesday found large US and UK firms spend about 28% of their software budgets on vendor-driven upgrades, migrations and licensing changes they would not have chosen.
- Survey respondents said the average recent vendor-driven change cost was $12.87 million and 95% had paid for upgrades they expected to worsen performance or value.
- Eighty-four percent reported that senior engineering staff always or often work on vendor-mandated changes instead of innovation, and 91% said they retired still-working hardware to meet vendors' support deadlines.
- Most IT leaders said vendors set the timing and terms of change and that leaving a major supplier would cause major disruption, and large majorities back legal protections and software support obligations.
- Originating from a shift to subscription and SaaS models, the report links the problem to relationship-specific investments that give vendors leverage and recommends clearer exit terms, modular design and possible regulatory guardrails.