Build or Buy? Comparing Off-The-Shelf and Homegrown Software Applications

Do you know when you should buy software and when you should build custom software internally? A wrong answer could cost your business dearly. Read this eBook to learn the pros and cons of each!

The question to buy software or build it internally to solve business needs is becoming increasingly prevalent in today's world. Building software has frequently won out in this debate in the past, but with the introduction of cloud computing, the tables are turning.

This is due in part to the fact that the pace of technology innovation is accelerating at an almost exponential rate, making it difficult for the average internal IT groups to cope with the pace of change. The struggle commonly lies in the fact that they not only they have to create the software internally - they must also maintain and upgrade it indefinitely.

Now, even large global enterprises in both public and private sectors that have invested tens of millions of dollars in internal IT infrastructure are beginning to migrate to cloud applications. In fact, the Gartner Group sees the public cloud for the hosting of enterprise applications as the fastest growing IT market in the next ten years.

The largest enterprise software companies in the world (IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc.) see their future delivery platform as the cloud, so their customers are rapidly retiring in-house IT environments, dramatically reducing their IT operational costs as well as their historical reliance on internal IT staff for software development and support.

Check out this eBook for an easy analysis of when to buy, when to build, and the pros and cons of each.