For example, Pang notes that business mashups could jumpstart financial accounting applications that allow users to incorporate external variables (such as weather forecasts or environmental impact studies) into their financial planning, forecasting and reporting processes, not to mention the risk assessment of their investment returns.

The overriding message for CIOs, according to Pang, is that they "need to balance their systems landscape in a way that doesn't allow any one vendor to have undue influence over their strategies," Pang says. "When that happens, they can play them against each other, and they can take advantage of all these development efforts going on."

What's to Come of Enterprise License Maintenance Fees?

It seems like CIOs have forever complained about the sticker shock of enterprise software maintenance fees. The costs, which historically have averaged right around 22 percent a year for enterprise implementations, are a huge financial hit for many IT departments.

"When the vendors emphasize tactical improvements as the primary value delivered by maintenance, that has caused people to say: 'What am I getting for my maintenance dollars?'" says Woods.

During the last year or so, many CIOs have either looked into or completely turned over their ERP or CRM systems maintenance to a third-party provider such as TomorrowNow or Rimini Street. But the lawsuit that Oracle slapped upon TomorrowNow (and SAP, which owns TomorrowNow) and SAP's missteps in handling the situation at TomorrowNow has cast a shadow on the third-party maintenance business model.

Even so, third-party maintenance has piqued IT executives' interest and will continue to do so in 2008. "What TomorrowNow is is a manifestation of the market questioning the value of maintenance," says Woods. "Almost everyone asks the question, Can we rethink our maintenance approach? Now is that third party, or going off maintenance altogether, or stabilizing the system? That's a big question right now."

One of the big reasons for CIOs' frustration is that some vendors arenâ¬"t doing a good enough job articulating their path to the next generation of enterprise tools, Woods says. "It's a tricky and complicated decision, and there are not easy answers for it. It has to be linked to the business strategy and risk portfolio."

Of course, maintenance fees are infamous for their 90 percent margins. Which makes vendors loathsome to even talk about them, let alone consider making some significant changes. Leaver, however, says that could start to change in 2008. If they want to keep their current customers happy, she says, "the application companies are going to have to rethink their pricing schemes and maintenance fees."