Customers Angry Over Enterprise Software

from the yeah,-couldn't-have-guessed-that-one dept

If you've been involved in the buying or selling of enterprise software, you're likely aware that much of it is something of a scam. The prices are quite flexible, and the "real" costs show up much later, when people realize that (a) the product doesn't really work the way they wanted it to (b) it needs ridiculous amounts of expensive customization, maintenance and training and (c) the vendor is always breathing down their neck to pay for an "upgrade" and service contract. As it stands, the incentives for the vendors are to make the initial price seem low, but to make sure the actual software doesn't work very well. It appears that customers are starting to catch on and increasingly angry about standard practices in enterprise software. They're also (finally!) threatening to stop playing into the system and changing their buying habits. They're training their own people to support the system, they're renegotiating maintenance contracts and they're switching to "more accommodating" vendors. Clearly, there's room for companies to come in with much more reasonable offerings. In some cases, I imagine this is going to take the form of ASP or hosted offerings, but those are still limited depending on what the customer needs. It could make sense for a company to pull a PR move and start advertising much more transparent pricing plans to better attract customers who feel more comfortable knowing what they're really paying for.