2005 Support Demand Research Series Highlights

The IT buying binge of the ‘90s, during which enterprises invested more than $6 trillion, created a sprawling, often fractured installed base of products. Most of these products are complex, hard-to-use, and require a lot of care and feeding. Limited training, frequent patches, performance issues, security problems, and rapid upgrade and/or replacement cycles are recurring problems. These issues lead to a rise in the total cost of support and maintenance (TCSM), which in 2004, made up 47% of IT budgets.

SSPA Research findings show that there will be increasing customer pressure on vendors to lower support and maintenance pricing and TCSM. Customer CIOs are likely to get more sophisticated and focused on that pricing, putting vendors’ support and maintenance margins and revenue at risk. Customers also want technical support to make it easier for them to operate their IT landscape and reduce TCSM.

In the short term, to defend maintenance margins, vendors need to learn how to communicate the value of technical support to customers and continue to be more efficient. In the future, vendors will have to design and architect their products to be easier to operate, manage, and support; and offer tools and services to reduce customers’ TCSM.

The first reports in this series are available now. For more info on the SSPA Research 2005 Support Demand Research Series, contact John South, Director of Membership Development, jsouth@thesspa.com or http://www.thesspa.com/supportdemand/default.asp

How do you handle price increases to your support maintenance?
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