[wvenable]

I've only recently started working for larger more corporate-type firms and it's absolutely amazing how much they pay for giant ball of mud software. Astronomical amounts and then on top of that there are maintenance fees, support fees, upgrade fees. It's absolutely amazing and frightening the money being spent.

So I think the problem isn't money; the real problem is there just isn't enough software! We have a software deficit. With software being a critical part of nearly every business in the world, there is huge demand but massively insufficient supply. In my industry, there are only two big software providers and a handful of smaller ones. And it's a huge industry in both money and sheer size. But they literally cannot buy anything but big balls of mud.

People are paying big money and small money for whatever software they can get. And that natural consequence is that performance, reliability, and security are hit or miss.

[Terr_]

Speaking from several years at a company pre- and post-merger, the software they want will always be scarce, because they want something customized just to themselves.

They might not get it, of course -- the money is an (often ineffective) stand-in for institutional/organizational change, AKA "throwing money at the problem."

It's simply easier to get people to spend gobs money than to change their comfortable short-term habits. (Evidence: Wasted gym memberships everywhere.)

[3pt14159]

The core problem isn't that there is a lack of software creation; there is a lack of software but the problem is that the buy is uneducated and conflates priorities. The most successful software services firms aren't those with great engineers, they are those with great sales guys.

The lack of discernment of the buyer is creating all this software waste. This is one of the reasons that MS Excel and Access run most of the world's financial data. The format is open enough that it basically imbues the user partial programming ability without having to worry about things like new line feeds and uptime.

[sethammons]

if you don't mind sharing, what industry/niche?

[wvenable]

Law.