By One Investor's Estimate, Old Software Spent About 30% of Engineering Keeping Old Versions Alive
Eric Vishria estimates vendors hosting and maintaining the software gave engineers that time back for new work.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy · Eric Vishria – The Past, Present, and Future of SaaS and Software - [Invest Like the Best, EP.183]About 30%, maybe more, of engineering inside an old software company went backward, not forward.
That estimate comes from Eric Vishria, a general partner at the venture firm Benchmark who previously worked at the software company Opsware. He recalled about 30%, maybe more, of engineering and product work going to supporting old versions, fixing bugs in them, carrying fixes back to them, and helping customers who were still on them. At Opsware, contracts, for example, promised to keep supporting an older release for two years after the next one arrived, so compatibility work kept piling up.
Subscription software, sometimes called SaaS, works differently. The old model shipped CDs that customers installed themselves. In the new model, the software company took over installation, daily operation, upkeep, and upgrades for the customer.
That change cut much of the backward-looking work. Engineers could spend more time improving the product and solving the next customer problem, and Vishria calls that reclaimed engineering time a big reason subscription software companies have stayed ahead.
Questions people ask
Why would customers stay on an old version for years?
Upgrading used to be a project, not a click. A company might have customized the software, trained staff on it, and connected it to other systems, so moving to a new version risked breaking things and required testing, downtime, and retraining. Many customers simply stayed put until they had to move.
What is backporting a bug fix?
It means taking a fix made for the newest version and rewriting it to work in an older one. Old versions often have different code and different assumptions, so the same bug has to be fixed twice, tested twice, and supported separately. Doing that across several supported versions multiplies the work.
Do subscription software companies have zero maintenance work today?
No, but the burden is much smaller and sits with the vendor. Subscription software companies still fix bugs and keep the service running, but they generally maintain one current version rather than several old ones. That is why more of their engineering can go into new features and improvements.