Here at the Depatment of Hopes and Dreams we're having a lovely spat with one of our software vendors at present. The issue is that my boss is questioning the need to pay a quarter of a million dollars in annual maintenance fees when he believes we only use about $40,000 worth of the product.
The interesting thing is that the software supplier has recalcuted the maintenance bill twice now using different breakdown structures. Both breakdowns don't help clarify exactly what it is that we're paying for. In fact the only figure that remains the same is the invoice amount - $250,000. Funny that.
The wider question is that once you've implemented something and it is successfully bedded in why bother paying maintenance ever again? The software vendor will say that you're our of support and that you original software licence will be revoked but if you do the cost benefit anaylsis you might find witholding the maintenance over say 5 years might pay for the replacement software further down the line. By that time the software might be half the price anyway. It's certainly worth some consideration.
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