Last year, the CEO of a large software company bragged to a journalist about his base of on-premise, large companycustomers. He called it “Fort Knox”, saying the core of his customers was “rock-solid” and implying that his entire customer base continues to renew its maintenance every year.
His comment adds to a common myth in the software market that large companies are content to stay with legacy solutions and do not adopt newer cloud, mobile and social solutions. The newer solutions, the argument goes, can only work for the small and medium enterprise.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Analysis of customer feedback shows enterprises, large and small, are increasingly frustrated with their on-premise technology vendors. They also know the history of the software industry—few vendors successfully navigate major architectural shifts. Tired of waiting for these vendors to modernize their environments, many customers are increasingly doing so on their own. We don’t just see them in a handful of customers, these are now in the hundreds and thousands of customers. Here are 5 of the popular modernization strategies:
- Two-Tier ERP
- Ring Fence
- Rip and Replace
- Next-gen application management
- Dip your toes
