IT executives from several large enterprises, including Lowe's and McGraw-Hill, have developed a "code of conduct for IT maintenance" to demand better quality and service from the software industry, reports Patrick Thibodeau at Computerworld. Rigid terms and growing maintenance costs, along with fears of increased consolidation in the industry, are spurring customers to speak out.

The code asks that software companies deliver predictable updates, in a sufficiently timely fashion to address regulatory changes. "Our challenge in getting patches out to 1,700-plus stores is we really have to coordinate a lot of different vendors, a lot of different stuff together, so knowing that schedule upfront really makes our job a lot easier," said Steven Stone, CIO of Lowe's.

The code includes "stratified IT support levels" so that the most critical processes would receive the highest degree of support. It also calls on vendors to provide predictable service levels and "clearly defined legacy version support." In addition, customers would have the ability to terminate support as an application becomes less used.

For more:
- see Patrick Thibodeau's article at Computerworld

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