"Old software never dies"

Software analyst Judith Hurwitz makes an interesting point about Oracle's aggressive acquisition strategy, which has moved the company front and center into the middleware and enterprise applications business:

I have to give them credit for swooping in and buying their way into a leadership position. While it is hard to buy companies and keep them going, in the packaged software arena it isn’t as hard as it looks. For example, customers who buy a PeopleSoft HR application are not going to dump it just because the company was purchased by Oracle. Software is a funny thing — it lingers for decades after everyone assumed that it would be dead. As I always say, old software never dies.

Funny thing about enterprise software: it's expensive and painful to deploy, so it's shelf-life tends to measured in units of many years.