Software Suppliers The 800lb Gorilla Problem

Your business relies on certain software to function – so what happens when the publisher’s interests don’t align with yours? Steve Cassidy explores a widespread problem

- Steve Cassidy

I’ve visited a lot of businesses over the years and, time and time again, I’ve seen one particular scenario play out – one I call the “800lb gorilla problem”. Indeed, it’s not just limited to tech companies: it almost doesn’t matter what business you're in.

That’s perhaps not something you’d normally expect to hear from a consultant. The official philosophy is that every company is different, and a lot less wisdom than you’d hope is reusable from one firm to another. But then 800lb gorillas don’t follow the normal rules. In the words of the old joke: where does an 800lb gorilla sit? Wherever it pleases. In this case, the gorilla is a de facto monopoly supplier. They crop up in all sorts of industries and, if your business relies on their services, you have little option but to shape your budgets, practices and roadmaps around theirs.

This isn’t to say that every sector that’s dominated by a single vendor is necessarily toxic. For example, most product designers use AutoCAD, which has an 85% market share in the CAD sector; lots of salespeople won’t go to a job where they can’t use Salesforce. In both cases, there’s a fairly benign coexistence between the publishers and the users of the software. Firms treat the predictable licensing rates as a simple cost of business, and the software houses shape their plans and offerings to fit the market’s majority population. 

I only wish that such genteel relationships were the norm across the software business. Unfortunately, they’re not. One hears plenty of stories about software suppliers mistreating their base of invested users, forcing through unwanted changes to the product or pricing, or ignoring desperate pleas for much-needed updates and improvements.