R&D investments stagnating and engineering software sales slow down.
From a software customer perspective, three factors are shrinking investments in engineering software:

1. Open source software. Customers start to consider open source software as an option.
2. Mergers or acquisitions.  Newly-consolidating client companies maximize interoperability and reduce software redundancy, i.e. they get rid of the ones they don’t need anymore.
3. Wide Area Network vs. Local Area Network. Global companies want to deploy software on global scale. They need to reallocate software licenses into main servers, to gain economies of scale and optimize expenses for software.

From a software vendor perspective, three factors are driving sales down:

1. Open source software. Software editors consider open source (only) as a threat.
2. Mergers or acquisitions. Newly-consolidating software companies maximize interoperability and reduce software redundancy… It takes time, money and makes their clients endlessly ‘waiting for the next release’.
3. Wide Area Network vs. Local Area Network. For obvious reasons, global software vendors (still) like to sell software on local basis, avoiding clients to gain economies of scale and optimize expenses for software.

Symmetric perspectives on software sales drop-off.