Sip from the Firehose : Obsolete software costs U.S. companies billions of dollars in unnecessary IT spending

The Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum, today, announced the results of a survey, sponsored by Borland Cognizant and the BPM Forum, that studied the risks, liabilities, costs, complexities, and inefficiences of obsolete or unecessary business applications that are still deployed. In today’s BPM Forum press release, the headline reads "Osolete Software Costs U.S. Companies Billions of Dollars in Unnecessary IT spending. 70 percent of respondents say they have redundant or discarded applications, but lack systematic processes for retiring business solutions."

The online survey targeted a cross section of business line, operating and finance executives, as well as CIOs and IT personnel. The survey also focused on cost and business performance issues around improper application portfolio analysis and software "sprawl" in corporate environments, and the opinions, implications, awareness, costs, and prevalence around the availability, quality, and criticality of using, managing, maintaining and supporting software across the organization.

Some of the results mentioned in the press release include: "More than 40 percent of the respondents estimate that unwanted applications drain more than 10 percent of their IT budgets, while 10 percent estimate the real cost to be more than 20 percent. Fully 70 percent say their companies have redundant, deficient or obsolete applications on the network—and the problem is even more serious in larger companies with revenues over $500 million."

"It’s no secret that software drives business today, not just operationally but strategically as well," said Dale Fuller, president and CEO of Borland Software. "This study illustrates how dependent a company’s growth and competitive advantage are on software performance. Unfortunately, the study also shows the lack of control and visibility that management currently has over this important asset. Borland’s Software Delivery Optimization vision gets to the heart of this issue. By aligning business and IT organizations, we can help transition software development into a more managed process that maximizes the business value of that software."

Read the press release. You can also request a download of the report.