Whose roadmap is your software estate running on?

Most enterprise software estates run to somebody else’s calendar. End-of-support dates, license model changes and needless upgrades arrive on the vendor’s schedule, and the IT team absorbs them: the migration nobody budgeted for, the re-platforming that displaces a project the business actually asked for, the patch cadence that is really a product roadmap in disguise. Origina, an independent provider of software maintenance and support, puts figures on the pressure. As a rule of thumb, up to 90 percent of IT budgets go on “keeping the lights on”, leaving only 10 percent for anything new. Enterprise software costs, it says, are on course to rise 40 percent by 2027, and most of that increase is driven by vendors rather than by customers. The alternative it argues for is not standing still. It is to decide, on the business’ terms, what changes and when. …