Saturday, August 30, 2008

Software Updates - How many of us use the new features?

All Software Vendors charge customers an annual maintenance fees for support ( read defects in the software) and updates with new features. The cost of these fees is pretty high anything from 15 % of the list price to as as high as 30 % of the list price. I find that most applications do not use the new features. For existing applications in production, using the new features means a regression test, for new applications it means undergoing a training and trying out the new features. Do production applications have the budget and time for this or even for new applications do people have time and budget for learning experimenting and implementing. Are we using what we are paying for?