Software Upgrade Cost Justification – Making a Case

Abstract

Software upgrades are frequent in organizations, including academic departments. As soon as a major software developer releases a new version of their software, the questions repeats itself among various organizations as to whether to upgrade the software or to wait for further releases. Since the beginning of the recent difficult economic times, organizations have been trying to ra-tion their spending and are asking for justifications for most of their expenditures. Academic de-partments are among those hit with budget cuts and calls to ration spending. One of the areas that was hit by such calls for justification of expenses is in the area of software upgrades. This paper illustrates a case of one academic department that is requesting to upgrade their soft-ware and the justifications it provided to make a case to purchase new upgrades for their soft-ware. The department of Technology Support and Training (TST) at Eberly College of Business and Information Technology (ECOBIT) -Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) wants to up-grade their Adobe Creative Suite software to the most recent version of the market – Adobe Crea-tive Suite 5 (CS5).The TST department was asked to justify the purchase of this software when they submitted their request for upgrade. The reasons for the upgrade and the factors of justifica-tions listed by this department are illustrated in this paper.