Optimal Interval Time for Enterprise (Business Intelligence) Software Upgrade

In this paper, we discuss a situation of enterprise software upgrade that is common in real life. We started with a simplistic model with one software vendor and then multiple software vendors. This model led to an optimal interval time for upgrades that resembles the optimal time in Economic Order Quantity. A more realistic model with discrete time was proposed by adopting MicroStrategy case in releasing their newer software, namely one major upgrade followed by 3 minor upgrades in a year. We proved that the discrete cost function is convex. From an analysis of several numerical examples, we found very interesting and a bit counter intuitive observation.