Over the last decade plus, this procurement pattern has been increasingly challenged by a variety of disruptive technology adoption models: among them Open Source Software (OSS), cloud computing, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD). Developers, as we have asserted previously, are increasingly the New Kingmakers.

One of the biggest challenges for vendors built around traditional procurement patterns is their tendency to undervalue convenience. Developers, in general, respond to very different incentives than do their executive purchasing counterparts. Where organizational buyers tend to be less price sensitive and more focused on issues relating to reliability and manageability, as one example, individual developers tend to be more concerned with cost and availability – convenience, in other words. Because you are who you build for, then, enterprise IT products tend to be more secure and compliant and less convenient than developer-oriented alternatives.