News & Views

March 30, 2010 from InfoWorld – “When the economy is bad, businesses hold off on buying new enterprise apps and instead try to prolong the life of the ones they have. But there’s still the significant expense of vendors’ support contracts. Third-party support contracts may be the answer to reducing that cost.

 Software vendors don’t want to lose those support revenues, especially since they’re making less in new and upgrade sales. Some even have tried to raise their support income through schemes such as tiered support (a debacle at SAP) or all-or-nothing support (Oracle’s most recent approach to extracting more money from customers) — but doing so risks driving customers even faster to third-party offerings…

 Is third-party support right for you?

The answer depends mainly on two factors, says Forrester Research analyst Paul Hamerman: where the application is in its lifecycle and how important it is for you to stay current with software upgrades. “If [a user] has an installation that’s a couple releases back, customized, and difficult to upgrade, third-party support is a more viable option,” he says. “If it’s an expanding business or a new installation, third-party isn’t a good option because you’re off the enhancement pack…”

180 View – Even if you’re not interested in third party support, the article does provide advice on maintenance agreements.