Analyst blasts software support costs

By Gareth Morgan on May 14, 2009 6:23AM

Forrester Research is advising companies to pressure their software suppliers to lower their maintenance charges, accusing vendors of persisting with "customer-unfriendly practices that wouldn't be accepted in other spheres".

In a report, Duncan Jones, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, claims budgetary pressures are forcing IT leaders to demand reductions in maintenance costs – and many of them are succeeding.

"They can't talk about it publicly due to gagging clauses in software agreements, but many customers have won support cost reductions from even the most infamously intransigent industry giants," Jones writes in the report.

With IT chiefs seriously evaluating alternative software models, such as software-as-a-service, the makers of traditional on-premises software are under intense pressure to revise their model.

Jones said that with the traditional software model, customers often have to pay maintenance on software they have not deployed, or have their support bundled with upgrade rights they might not want, or are prevented from using third-party support providers.

"The software industry has gotten away for years with customer-unfriendly customs and practices that wouldn't be accepted in other spheres," he wrote.