TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY
hen it comes to the build vs buy debate, most technology leaders find themselves making less of a philosophical choice – instead, navigating around a daily friction point.
Traditionally, businesses could buy commodity software to save time or build proprietary systems to gain control. However, as enterprise architectures become more complex and AI accelerates development capabilities, the decision-making process – and focus – has shifted.
The reality is that very few enterprises are purely building or buying. Instead, they are managing a sprawling portfolio where the two approaches constantly overlap. This means that the challenge is no longer just selecting a vendor or hiring a development team – it is determining exactly where a company’ s competitive advantage lies and applying the right resource to it.
Historically, the buy argument relied on the promise of it being the‘ easy button’. This meant that SaaS vendors could pitch the dream of
102 March 2026