Survey finds enterprises waste 28% of software budgets on upgrades IT believes are detrimental

A survey of 2,018 chief information officers and senior IT decision-makers at companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue found that enterprises spend, on average, 28 percent of their software budgets on unwanted upgrades, migrations, or licensing changes.

Ninety-five percent of respondents reported paying for a vendor-driven upgrade, migration, or licensing change in the past three years that they believed at the time would reduce performance, reliability, or business value. Fifty-three percent said their organization had done so more than once.

Seventy-six percent of respondents said their organization has very little real leverage in negotiations with major vendors, and 80 percent said moving away from major vendors would cause significant disruption.

The report, commissioned by Origina and conducted by Censuswide, highlights that these dynamics divert funding from other areas, including innovation (36 percent of respondents), human resources (32 percent), security (31 percent), and customer-facing investment (31 percent).

Origina, which provides maintenance for enterprise software, frames independent software maintenance as a solution, noting that all respondents currently run at least one of IBM, HCL, VMware/Broadcom, or SAP at meaningful scale. The report does not name specific vendors as forcing upgrades.