But what if the energy to develop and support these contracts is overwhelming? A system that consists of just five standard components, each available in four commercial implementations, produces 20 configurations to test, certify, and support. How does this scale out? According to a distinguished engineer from IBM, a recent internal study revealed that only about one in three dollars that IBM spends on software product development goes toward new features. The other two-thirds are spent on non-value-added integration costs. IBM is no less efficient in software development than the rest of the industry. Mathematics is hard to argue with.