annual maintenance renewal price increases

[john0001]

I'd like to ask for this group's insight into enterprise software vendors' approaches to annual maintenance fees - one of our vendors is increasing our maintenance renewal by ~4% this year, siting costs of business as the reason. They do this regularly from what I understand. Is this to be expected from the majority of software vendors? I would expect that maintenance fees stay flat year on year but is this incorrect?

We are looking at an installation of Oracle and several other applications on top but are trying to get a sense of total costs over the long term and whether to look into other options. I can see our costs getting out of control if there will be a maintenance renewal increase every year... Any thoughts?

[Diarmid]

I suppose you could try to negotiate a contract that fixed charges for as long as you want. You could try. It is probably quite common to agree to hold charges for one or two years, but the business risks in much longer grow rather fast.

My advise: if you come across a company that guarantees no increases for ten years. look hard at them, because if they go out of business (due to cost increases that they cannot recoup) then you will not have any maintenance at all.
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