Consider the other side. (These are all things that happened before I arrived.) Vendor comes in and says, "yes, our software can do it." Then, everyone finds o

Consider the other side. (These are all things that happened before I arrived.) Vendor comes in and says, "yes, our software can do it." Then, everyone finds out that it can't. In comes some expensive customization that doesn't quite work right, but everyone has figured out how to work around it well enough. The company is using the database behind the scenes to provide the functionality we need. As such, it's massive heartache to even think about 5 years of upgrades. However, a fatal error comes up that can't be worked around because of the custom work done by the vendor at implementation time. We need a patch to the executable. However, the idea of just moving up to the new version has everyone here in a cold sweat. Our peers tell us the product has gotten worse than better. It's a 9 month implementation effort, with new training, new workarounds for the bugs, new everything. You still have the code. You're telling me a simple patch is unfeasible? This is a very common problem in consultingware. I've seen variations on the theme from both sides of the fence.