Dennis quotes me as saying “to dig in hard and, depending on how aggressive the customer wants to be, go as far as putting a moratorium on buying from certain vendors for 36 months.”
We were both on mobile phones, and I was using SkypeOut so he must have misheard me on the IP line.
Actually I said I was aware of companies which have instituted “Oracle-free zone in 36 months” projects (or SAP or IBM or another large sw vendor). The goal is no new incremental dollars to the vendor (no new licenses, no consulting dollars), move of maintenance dollars to third party providers in interim and migration to alternative SaaS, open source vendors or even custom apps in that time horizon.
Sounds extreme? Well it is the end-game scenario of my lament in October 2005 that vendors were unbalancing the buy-versus-build equilibrium and “killing the golden goose” The economy is just accelerating the transition.
BTW – I will readily admit I am a wimp compared to these CIOs who are launching these “free zone” projects. I join them in their prayers that at the end of their journeys their new platform of choice does not get acquired by the very big vendors who are forcing them down this painful transition.
