Packaged software is getting whacked ...
... by a shift inside IT to develop apps internally. That's the
conclusion drawn by Ken Berryman, a consultant at McKinsey &
Co. who also spoke at SoftSummit 2005. According to Berryman, New
York-based McKinsey in 1998 estimated that 31% of business
applications were internally developed. By 2003, that percentage
had jumped to 42%, while packaged apps fell from 32% of the mix to
28%, he says. Berryman says he
expects the trend to continue because there is now "a much more
standard software stack" for IT, including everything from
middleware to network protocols. Plus, he says, development tools
are improving.