Yes We Can (Cut Our Software Maintenance Costs)

It's one of the unwritten rules of software that maintenance costs only go up — never down. But we used to say that about house prices too. Today, software vendors are coming under increasing pressure from customers to cut maintenance bills, but the vendors are robustly defending their lifeblood with age-old, inflexible policies. However, enterprises' imperatives to reduce cost and the contrasting flexibility of new commercial models such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) are making the perpetual licensors realize that they may have to change their ways if they are to be in place to win new business when budgets return. Success in a tough discussion about sacrosanct maintenance revenue isn't simply a matter of negotiation skills. Vendor managers that adopt a solid vendor-specific negotiation strategy can achieve savings by convincing their suppliers of the long-term benefits of giving ground now.