In enterprise IT, we have 2 kinds of vendors, those we actively embrace and those who hold us hostage.
The biggest fear in making any major IT purchase is not the price, the conversion, or the change in culture; it’s the potential loss of options in how we run our own business.
I’ve seen it over and over again: competitive pressure requires us to make a change in the way we run our business, but we can’t. For all kinds of reasons. The license agreement kills any possible ROI. We don’t have the needed IT support because so much of it is spent on keeping current. The systems don’t talk to each other. The feature we need is still 18 months away. And probably most of all, the software is not as excellent as we need it to be (let’s just leave it at that).
Long gone are the days when you needed IBM’s permission to fart. Guess who the biggest culprit is today?
Just because you go with someone doesn’t necessarily mean you like it. Almost every enterprise IT department I know would love an alternative to Microsoft. (And make no mistake about it, the enterprise is Microsoft’s strength, much more so than the consumer.)
Sure, pissing off your customers may pad today’s bottom line. How do you think those customers will feel when your landscape changes and they have more choices?
[Entered using ie7 on xp pro. I didn’t have a choice.]