The Ugly Truth about Your Software Vendor which CISOs Won’t Want (But Do Need) to Hear

We’ve got a hard truth to share with you, and you might not like it:

You are not your software vendor’s top priority.

Your vendor is focused on their own business-critical priorities: improving profit margins, getting customers migrated to the cloud, and ending support for their legacy products because the revenue margins are dwindling. They want to sell you new add-ons and expensive upgrades, and as a result, you’re frantically trying to keep up with your vendor’s timeline and expectations to keep your systems supported and optimized.

You’ve probably heard about third-party software support as the alternative to your vendor lock-in woes. Third-party software support is a way of maintaining and supporting your systems with a partner who intimately understands SAP and Oracle infrastructures and will work with you directly to ensure your environment is secure, compliant, and delivering real and competitive ROI.

But as a CISO, we know that it’s not as easy for you to just click your fingers and swap out your software support provider, and we know there are many questions – and assumed issues – that you may have around moving your support away from your vendor’s in-house offering. Whether you’re concerned about security, compliance, cost effectiveness, or interoperability, let’s have a look at why and how third-party software support might have the edge over your vendor’s in-house support.

Security

This is, we believe, the number one hurdle when it comes to looking at alternative software support providers for ERP systems, and we understand why. But what if we told you that your enterprise’s overall security posture could improve with the support and expertise from a third-party software support provider?

With third-party support, your provider takes a bespoke approach to your security and compliance requirements. Take vulnerability management, for example.

As it stands, your existing vendor may offer patches to fix open-door vulnerabilities. But these patches are delivered to you only after the vulnerability is discovered: an approach that resembles sticking a band-aid on multiple wounds instead of minimizing the threats that caused the injury in the first place. This can be evidenced by the recent discovery that a seven- year-old Oracle patch failed to fully address a security vulnerability, which is now being exploited publicly.

Your enterprise probably already takes a comprehensive approach to its security and vulnerability management, proactively testing and remediating your internal and external attack surfaces and working to improve any gaps in your security infrastructure. So why wouldn’t you want to work with a partner who adopts this very same, full-stack approach to security and vulnerability management?

Compliance 

Compliance is a top priority for information security teams, and your risk, legal, business management and continuity colleagues rely on you to get it right. Whether it’s meeting government regulations on cybersecurity and data protection or adhering to specific industry standards for financial reporting and legal compliance, you must ensure your software system doesn’t expose the business to non-compliance, regulatory penalties, or data breaches.

We often hear that fear of non-compliance deters enterprises from considering third-party support. Fear not: working with a third-party software support partner could enhance your compliance objectives. These partners provide comprehensive support to ensure your software environments meet all regulatory requirements, offering tailored guidance on frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and more. They achieve this through proactive monitoring, timely updates, and in-depth audits to identify and rectify compliance gaps.

Contrast this with traditional vendor support services, which often focus on generic updates and patches that may not fully address your unique compliance needs. A third-party software support partner will ensure your systems are compliant, even if you’re running a legacy software version that Oracle or SAP no longer support. They also tackle complex, time-sensitive tax and regulatory issues, customizing solutions to meet your exact needs based on your industry and geography.

Interoperability

Your enterprise software system is complex, customized, interconnected, and requires seamless integration with your external systems and surrounding technologies. Critically, you need to ensure that all data transferred and used within your systems – and between different systems, apps, and platforms – is secured appropriately and adheres to your data protection and privacy policies.

Unfortunately, we often find that software vendors do not provide the level of interoperability support that businesses require for their complex and customized software instances. This can have severe repercussions for your data protection and security efforts.

When you choose to work with a third-party support partner, you’ll benefit from fewer headaches in managing a heterogeneous software environment. Your partner will work closely with you to resolve interoperability issues, ensure adherence to data protection and security protocols, and identify opportunities to optimize workflows and productivity. This collaboration offers long-term benefits for your business by ensuring that your systems work smoothly together. As a result, you can extend the life cycle of your software and avoid unnecessary and expensive upgrades and updates whenever an interoperability issue arises.

Maximizing ROI 

OK, so you’ve secured your software systems, and you’re meeting all your compliance requirements. But you’re also under pressure to ensure that you’re maximizing ROI from your software investments.

This is where a third-party software support partner can offer extraordinary value.

A third-party support partner will save you, on average, 60%+ the cost of your expensive vendor support contract. These savings can be reallocated to strategic initiatives that drive business growth and innovation – like that digital transformation project you’ve been trying to find the budget and business case for.

Crucially, these initiatives are driven by you. Say goodbye to pressure from software vendors to upgrade to the newest software or database version. Say goodbye to your fear of losing critical support for systems when your vendor considers them too old to support and maintain. Instead, you’ll be working with a software partner who extends the lifespan of your existing software assets, allowing your organization to extract maximum value from its investments.

Traditional vendor support contracts, like those from SAP and Oracle, often come with high costs and rigid terms that do not always align with the strategic goals of your organization.

Just take the costs associated with mandatory upgrades and the limited scope of support available to you, which can strain IT budgets and pile additional pressure onto your teams, without delivering tangible business value. This, coupled with the reality that your software vendor just isn’t motivated to work with you to achieve your business goals, makes for an uncomfortable situation.

Why settle for that when you can benefit from a flexible support model that prioritizes performance tuning and optimization? This approach ensures your software applications run efficiently, enhancing productivity and reducing operational costs.

When your organization achieves a more favorable ROI on its software expenditures, you’ll free up resources for other critical projects. For CISOs, this translates into a more sustainable IT budget and the ability to invest in security initiatives that directly improve your organization’s risk posture.

How’s that for a hard truth?

About the Author

As Spinnaker Support’s CTO, Iain Saunderson is responsible for the internal and external facing technology leveraged at Spinnaker Support, as well as managing the security practice. Iain Saunderson has over 30 years of experience implementing complex technologies across a wide variety of commercial and government verticals. He has served in leadership roles in organizations including Oracle Corporation, P2 Energy Solutions, and DBAK. Iain’s experience is in leading enterprise architecture, development, and managed services organizations