[im_down_w_otp]

It's because almost every business believes it's a special snowflake, and thus by extension so are its technology & process problems. Given that there's almost always somebody willing to sell them a custom solution who wants to make money reinforcing that delusion. It's not all that surprising that many, many non-tech or tangentially-tech markets end up saddled with a pile of proprietary hacked together garbage software and systems.

It's shockingly rare to encounter a Principal, CEO, or COO who goes into every business problem they have with a perspective like, "I know we're not an R&D company, so almost certainly our problems aren't pioneering efforts into the unknown frontier. Somebody must have encountered these issues before, so how can I capitalize on the fact that they must have already spent the money to resolve them?"

[osullivj]

Historically, this has been especially true in investment banking, where every department, desk even, believes it's a special snowflake, and commissions their own solutions. High profitability exacerbated this. Increased regulation means lower margins, and proprietary solutions are declining.