Enterprises are spending nearly a third of their software budgets on upgrades, migrations, and licensing changes they never asked for, according to a survey of 2,018 senior IT decision-makers in the US and UK. The average share was 28%, and the most recent vendor-driven change cost organizations an average of $12.87 million. Notably, 95% of respondents said they had paid for at least one such change in the past three years despite expecting worse reliability, performance, or value.
The costs extend beyond software. Some 91% of respondents said their organizations had retired working hardware in the past three years to meet software support deadlines, sacrificing an estimated 1.65 years of remaining useful life on average. The survey also found that 84% of organizations regularly diverted experienced engineers from other projects to handle vendor-driven upgrades, leaving less time for work businesses actually want done.
Most respondents feel they have little choice in the matter: 76% said they have little negotiating leverage with major software vendors. The survey's authors frame this as a "software tax" that can make IT systems worse while funding innovation that never gets built. In response, 91% of respondents backed legislation giving enterprise software customers protections similar to residential tenants, and 82% supported maintenance requirements akin to EU hardware repairability rules.
The research was conducted by Censuswide for Origina, an independent software support provider, and published with Thinkers50. Origina has a commercial interest in offering an alternative to vendor maintenance, but the findings paint a consistent picture of customers spending millions on suppliers' priorities rather than their own.