Big software vendors like to feather out their nest with a bed of ancillary services and functions designed to position themselves as one-stop-shop solution providers. Where successful, this means that customers can potentially avoid software integration and update issues that might otherwise hamper their day-to-day operations.

It is also meant to provide customers with a no-brainer approach to staying on that vendor’s platform and roadmap, which (in theory at least) avoids other incompatibilities created when customers bring about in house customizations. In reality, almost every medium-sized business (and bigger) will always operate with a mix of technology platforms, different databases and device form factors — but aiming for Nirvana isn’t a bad idea, even if most of us never get there.

Source: forbes.com
Author: Adrian Bridgwater