Survey: Vendor Changes Take 28% of Large Firms’ Software Budgets

Large companies in the United States and United Kingdom allocate an average 28% of their software budgets to vendor-driven changes they say they would not otherwise have chosen, according to a survey commissioned by software maintenance provider Origina. The findings point to costs that respondents said also draw staff and equipment away from other work. Censuswide surveyed 2,018 senior IT decision-makers in May 2026. Their employers had at least $1 billion in annual revenue or 10,000 employees and used at least one of IBM, HCL, VMware-Broadcom or SAP at meaningful scale. The results reflect respondents’ reports and apply to the organizations surveyed, not necessarily to businesses generally. Origina said the average cost of respondents’ most recent vendor-driven software change was $12.87 million. The changes included upgrades, migrations and licensing changes that respondents said their organizations would not have selected independently. The survey did not specify in the reported figure whether that cost was annual, so it is best understood as the reported average cost of the most recent change. In the previous three years, 95% of respondents said their organization had...