Over 71 percent of in-house IT builds fail to deliver
A survey of over 2,000 IT and security decision-makers finds that 71 percent of in-house IT builds are eventually abandoned. In heavily regulated industries like manufacturing and finance this rises to 83 percent, which underscores how complexity and compliance pressures make homegrown systems difficult to sustain.
The study from Exclaimer calls this ‘The DIY Mirage’, a false sense of control and efficiency that fades as maintenance demands, compliance risks, and long-term costs grow.
“We commissioned this report to bring clarity to a question every IT leader faces: do you build, or do you buy?” says Paul Hammond, chief product and technology officer, at Exclaimer. “The data shows that while building in-house can feel like control, it often comes at the expense of time, security, and scalability. At Exclaimer, we’ve seen how easily operational burden creeps in when IT teams are forced to maintain tools that were never meant to scale. This research helps organizations see the full picture, that true efficiency isn’t about owning every line of code, but freeing teams to focus on growth and innovation.”
Nearly half of IT teams still prefer to build their own tools, but only eight percent of those projects are delivered on time and just 11 percent stay on budget. In reality, more than half take 1.6 to two times longer than planned, and almost half of all in-house IT projects (46 percent) end up costing close to twice what the organization originally budgeted for.
Only six percent of US builds finish on time compared with around 11 percent in the UK, while 89 percent of US projects exceed budget versus 84 percent in the UK. Despite the regional differences, both markets underestimate the time and cost required to maintain home-grown software.
There are other demands too as 63 percent of teams say they spend 10–50 hours per month maintaining internal tools, and 66 percent require an additional $20,000 to $100,000 a year to keep them running. With 64 percent of organizations reporting security-related downtime and 31 percent citing compliance and data protection challenges as key barriers, what starts as a cost-saving initiative quickly turns into a long-term liability rather than a strategic advantage.
When asked why they choose to buy rather than build, IT leaders point to speed (30 percent), access to expertise (29 percent), and reliability (28 percent) as key drivers. While reasons for the shift towards buying differ by market, the direction teams are taking is clear. UK teams, driven by regulatory pressure (33 percent), are turning to specialist vendors for compliance and control. US teams, historically more speed-oriented (23 percent), are now finding that vendor partnerships offer faster scalability and reduced maintenance. Both regions show a decisive shift: buying for efficiency now outweighs building for control.
“As organizations race to modernize and scale securely, we’re seeing that IT leaders recognize that buying from trusted partners delivers faster deployment, predictable performance, and built-in compliance without the constant drain of maintenance and patching. The research shows that these partnerships now represent trust, visibility, and control, backed by enterprise-grade governance and security. The question is therefore not whether IT teams can build, they must decide when they should,” adds Hammond.
You can get the full report from the Exclaimer site.
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