> I once pitched an off-the-shelf program to a corporate, which would have cost 10k to roll out company wide. But the procurement process demanded a proper eval

> I once pitched an off-the-shelf program to a corporate, which would have cost 10k to roll out company wide. But the procurement process demanded a proper evaluation first, which eould cost about 5 times that. Normally, the cost of COTS software is many times the sticker price. Deployment, ongoing training (of existing and new staff), adjusting policies, security monitoring, upgrades, etc., etc., all have costs. Even if this was a "use once only and throw away" program, the cost of deployment (timetabling, writing and distributing instructions for use, etc.) and of ensuring deletion would be more than $10k in even a small organisation. Proper evaluations take these costs into account. Bureaucracy is the worst form of management, except for all the others that have been tried.