I think this is a misunderstanding of the "nobody ever got fired for using tech stack X" The background is something like: 1. I'm a profitable (or governmen

I think this is a misunderstanding of the "nobody ever got fired for using tech stack X" The background is something like: 1. I'm a profitable (or governmental) organization 2. I'm doing a thing in a critical part of my enterprise 3. That thing is not seen by stakeholders as a core business competency So examples might be the computer network of a hospital or inventory management for a manufacturer. The "build / buy" is more "I want to give someone money who will make my problem go away." And with a sufficiently large organization even ordinary problems potentially turn into complex problems, so when you find an organization to give money to to make the problem go away, you want an organization that can make all of the problem go away even if it means spending a lot of money. IBM (and microsoft / cisco, oracle, amazon, and a pretty small number of other players) can all cash the "give me money and I will solve all your problems" check. (edited for formatting)