The current frustration with IT maintenance budgets isn't the result of an overnight revolution within corporate America. Phil Murphy, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., and author of a recent report titled "Stop Treating Maintenance as a Chore," says the situation has been building for years. "Maintenance budgets are higher than they should be," Murphy says, but he blames that on shortsightedness rather than malfeasance. "I don't believe it's a 'let's hide the money in maintenance' malicious activity," he says.

"The thing that governs maintenance is political power," Murphy says. "There is collusion, but it's not at the level you think. It's not the CIO stockpiling money to hide."

He thinks that companies have been ignoring the maintenance mess as they have focused on promising technologies. That's one reason why many are spending 75 percent or more of their IT budgets on maintenance, Murphy says. "Now we have to pay the piper," he adds.

Maintenance budgets are also high because of something Murphy calls "leakage." That's when an IT staffer who's tight with a business-unit leader helps get the unit's wish-list project done "one bug fix at a time." On the pretext of fixing a system, they're really slowly converting it to a new system -- under cover, he says.

Part of the confusion arises because companies put slightly different items under the maintenance budget heading. Generally, it includes vendor fees and labor to maintain existing systems. It also includes costs for activities that keep the whole IT infrastructure running, such as fixing a bug or adding a user.