How Fortune 500s Negotiate Vendor Software Maintenance Caps

Episode notes

Episode 95 of Enterprise Tech with Fexingo dives into a fierce battleground in enterprise software contracts: caps on maintenance fee increases. Lucas and Luna unpack how Fortune 500 procurement teams are pushing back against 20-30% annual maintenance hikes by negotiating hard caps tied to CPI or fixed percentages. The episode uses a concrete case from a global bank that capped maintenance at 5% annually by committing to a three-year renewal and removing sunset clauses. Lucas explains why vendors like SAP and Oracle historically used maintenance as an annuity, and Luna shares a counterexample from a retailer that got burned by an uncapped agreement. The hosts discuss legal leverage points such as retroactive rebates, audit look-back periods, and the tension between software escrow and maintenance. This is a tactical guide for any enterprise buyer or seller navigating software agreements.

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