Re: Don't you reall mean
'Exit Strategies'
Well, moving to Microsoft, IBM, SAP aren't going to help these companies. For the most part they elected to buy in a third party IT system, because the concluded that it would be cheaper and better to do so, and that ownership of the IP and the system architecture weren't core requirements for their business. And unfortunately, it now turns out that for any big customer service business, your business IS your CRM and your ERP, and you need control of both cost and capability.
Given the vast pain and expense in any major IT migration, ERP/CRM aren't products or services you can re-source every five years to get a better deal, which is something these companies overlooked - they've locked themselves into deals with predatory IP companies, whose "licence" agreement is a singularly one sided agreement. If they can't even understand the licence terms, then it certainly is time to consider an exit strategy, but that is very long, very slow, and involves building as much as economically and technically possible of your own systems, and VERY slowly moving your business onto that new IT platform (possibly even creating a new operating company for the new system, and only putting new customers on it. That needn't mean building it yourself, and it can involve buying a basic third party software core - but THIS TIME, make sure that the terms aren't one sided, can't be changed to suit some future IP troll, that there's change of control terms that gives the customer access to the source - or even buy the IT company. Most big ERP and CRM systems were originally crafted by quite small companies, there's nothing magic about this.
Then again, how many companies would be brave enough to do this?