Picture credit: bbcworldservice
The credit crunch is likely to bring an upsurge in vendors seeking to maintain revenue streams by squeezing their installed userbase even harder.
Previous downturns have been seen as an opportunity for bringing forward so-called ‘sunset’ dates for older products, with the intention of jolting users into upgrading to newer versions, usually at a cost.
The direct consequence of this vendor-driven initiative is unwelcome [and probably unbudgeted] expense for their customers, often without perceived business benefits.
For sure, I fully understand why vendors have to set sunset dates for withdrawing support arrangements for older products but this is still one of the most difficult concepts to sell to non-technical colleagues. Going cap in hand to the board for funding an upgrade is never an enjoyable experience. Even less so when times are tight.
Very often a seemingly minor skirmish with a technology component escalates into a full-scale gunfight, as the domino effect of consequences, compatibilities and dependencies kicks in. There is a well-established nexus between hardware and software, which means that an upgrade to either leads to changing [upgrading] the other. In some cases the eventual cost of the exercise can easily turn into millions.
And very often the so-called benefits of the upgrade are not actually on the radar of the organisation’s wish-list, they are usually reasonably happy to stay with what they have and don’t welcome the enforced changes at all.
At the end of the day, like many other corporate ‘investment’ choices, the decision to accede to the sunset corral usually comes down to a risk management call. Or, in extreme circumstances, the availability of funding.
In these straightened times, this means that more organisations are likely to be ‘out of support’ for key system components. Which can’t be good for stakeholders.
Leaving vendors with a difficult choice: go for the gunfight at the sunset corral, or drown their sorrows in the Last Chance Saloon.
