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Software Failures Cost the Enterprise Software Market $61 Billion Annually

While the adoption of continuous integration (CI) is on the rise, software engineering teams are unable to take a zero-tolerance approach to software failures, costing enterprise organizations billions annually, according to a quantitative study conducted by Undo and a Cambridge Judge Business School MBA project.

"Every company is a software company. The ability for engineering teams to deliver high quality software at velocity is the difference between companies that gain a competitive edge versus those that fall behind," said Undo CEO Barry Morris. "The next phase of CI will be about making defect resolution bounded, efficient and less skills-dependent. Organizations that evolve with CI will be able to resolve bugs faster, accelerate software delivery and reduce engineering costs."

The research concluded three key findings:

1. Adoption of CI best practices is on the rise

88% of enterprise software companies say they have adopted CI practices, compared to 70% in 2015.

More than 50% of businesses surveyed report deploying new code changes & updates at least daily, with 35% reporting hourly deployments

2. Reproducing software failures is impeding delivery speed

41% of respondents say getting the bug to reproduce is the biggest barrier to finding and fixing bugs faster; and 56% say they could release software 1-2 days faster if reproducing failures wasn’t an issue.

Software engineers spend an average of 13 hours to fix a single software failure in their backlog.

3. Failing tests cost the enterprise software market $61 billion annually

This equals 620 million developer hours a year wasted on debugging software failures.

Although CI adoption is becoming ubiquitous, test suites are still plagued by a growing backlog of failing tests. Failures in integration and automated tests cause bottlenecks in the development pipeline, and substantially increase engineering costs.

The study further suggests that reproducibility of failures is also a major blocker, finding that not being able to reproduce issues slows engineering teams down and prevents them from releasing software changes at pace.

To fully realize the benefits of CI, software failure replay offers a way out by enabling engineering teams to reproduce and fix software bugs faster. By eliminating the guesswork in defect diagnosis, development teams are able to accelerate Mean-Time-to-Resolution (MTTR) — resulting in considerable cost savings.

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Software Failures Cost the Enterprise Software Market $61 Billion Annually

While the adoption of continuous integration (CI) is on the rise, software engineering teams are unable to take a zero-tolerance approach to software failures, costing enterprise organizations billions annually, according to a quantitative study conducted by Undo and a Cambridge Judge Business School MBA project.

"Every company is a software company. The ability for engineering teams to deliver high quality software at velocity is the difference between companies that gain a competitive edge versus those that fall behind," said Undo CEO Barry Morris. "The next phase of CI will be about making defect resolution bounded, efficient and less skills-dependent. Organizations that evolve with CI will be able to resolve bugs faster, accelerate software delivery and reduce engineering costs."

The research concluded three key findings:

1. Adoption of CI best practices is on the rise

88% of enterprise software companies say they have adopted CI practices, compared to 70% in 2015.

More than 50% of businesses surveyed report deploying new code changes & updates at least daily, with 35% reporting hourly deployments

2. Reproducing software failures is impeding delivery speed

41% of respondents say getting the bug to reproduce is the biggest barrier to finding and fixing bugs faster; and 56% say they could release software 1-2 days faster if reproducing failures wasn’t an issue.

Software engineers spend an average of 13 hours to fix a single software failure in their backlog.

3. Failing tests cost the enterprise software market $61 billion annually

This equals 620 million developer hours a year wasted on debugging software failures.

Although CI adoption is becoming ubiquitous, test suites are still plagued by a growing backlog of failing tests. Failures in integration and automated tests cause bottlenecks in the development pipeline, and substantially increase engineering costs.

The study further suggests that reproducibility of failures is also a major blocker, finding that not being able to reproduce issues slows engineering teams down and prevents them from releasing software changes at pace.

To fully realize the benefits of CI, software failure replay offers a way out by enabling engineering teams to reproduce and fix software bugs faster. By eliminating the guesswork in defect diagnosis, development teams are able to accelerate Mean-Time-to-Resolution (MTTR) — resulting in considerable cost savings.

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Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...

In March, New Relic published the State of Observability for Media and Entertainment Report to share insights, data, and analysis into the adoption and business value of observability across the media and entertainment industry. Here are six key takeaways from the report ...

Regardless of their scale, business decisions often take time, effort, and a lot of back-and-forth discussion to reach any sort of actionable conclusion ... Any means of streamlining this process and getting from complex problems to optimal solutions more efficiently and reliably is key. How can organizations optimize their decision-making to save time and reduce excess effort from those involved? ...

As enterprises accelerate their cloud adoption strategies, CIOs are routinely exceeding their cloud budgets — a concern that's about to face additional pressure from an unexpected direction: uncertainty over semiconductor tariffs. The CIO Cloud Trends Survey & Report from Azul reveals the extent continued cloud investment despite cost overruns, and how organizations are attempting to bring spending under control ...

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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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