Roll Your Own Future.

This article focuses on the reasons why companies in the U.S. build their own applications rather than buying into more packaged software. The lifeblood of so many software companies increasingly flows directly from their maintenance and support fees to offset the economic drag of lower sales. But it is not just the high cost of applications and their hefty annual fees that are driving development of homegrown applications. Ranking high as reasons for this approach are dissatisfaction with complacent vendors that do not respond quickly enough to user needs, the ability to tailor information technology to one's business, and to control the fate of applications too vital to trust to outside developers.