Vendors face backlash over maintenance and upgrade costs: AMR's strategy 21 conference.(Views from the front)

MSI, April, 2004

Business software users are unhappy about what they perceive as onerous maintenance and upgrade pricing policies, and it's time for vendors to take steps to satisfy customers on this issue, a prominent industry analyst says. Jim Shepherd, a VP with Boston-based AMR Research, told software industry executives at the firm's Strategy 21 Conference that a survey of business software customers revealed discontent.

"For many years, annual maintenance costs generally ranged from 13 percent to 15 percent of list price for licenses. In the last four or five years, it's gone up to an industry average of about 18 percent, and in some cases, it's more than 20 percent," Shepherd said. Among users' biggest complaints: in the wake of cutbacks of corporate IT...

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