[caoilte]

Yup. Very often. In fact every system I ever saw being outsourced was being done so in the knowledge that it was going to die. It's a face saving gesture that allows executives to sidestep the sunk cost write-off.

In a couple of large retail examples it was obvious that they knew their entire bricks and mortar business model only had a decade or so of life left in it and they figured their godawful legacy ERP solution would stumble on until then.