① Journal · Software AG
An Adabas and Natural estate is hard to leave, and the vendor knows it. A captive base plus a built in annual escalator is the textbook condition for support that compounds quietly, because the buyer's usual lever, the credible walk away, carries a long and costly migration behind it.
When leaving is expensive, the escalator does not need to be loud.
Adabas, the transactional database, and Natural, the application language, are the products Software AG was built on in the 1970s and 1980s. They still run mission critical workloads at large enterprises, and the code written against them is deep, specific, and expensive to replace. In early 2025 Adabas and Natural launched as a standalone business under Silver Lake ownership, separate from the ARIS process products and from the webMethods and StreamSets assets that moved to IBM. A standalone unit focused on a mature mainframe estate optimizes that estate for predictable recurring revenue.
That is the setting in which support compounds quietly. Legacy agreements commonly carry an annual maintenance escalator, and because migrating off Adabas and Natural is a multiyear program, the credible walk away that normally caps an increase is hard to assemble. The escalator does not have to be aggressive to matter; on a captive estate even a modest annual increase compounds for years with little to push against it. The result is a support line that climbs steadily while usage stays flat. Read this with our true cost of doing nothing and the subscription and support explainer.
Worked · maintenance line indexed to 100 at term start, usage unchanged, no walk away
| Annual escalator | Year 1 | Year 3 | Year 5 | Five year total vs flat 500 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 percent | 103.0 | 109.3 | 115.9 | 547 · plus 9 percent |
| 5 percent | 105.0 | 115.8 | 127.6 | 580 · plus 16 percent |
| 7 percent | 107.0 | 122.5 | 140.3 | 615 · plus 23 percent |
Worked illustration, not a quote. A flat estate paying five equal years indexes to 500. Even a modest 5 percent escalator leaves the buyer paying the equivalent of 580 across five years, and on a captive estate there is little leverage to negotiate it down at each renewal. The compounding does the work the vendor would otherwise have to argue for.
A vendor that knows the estate cannot leave quickly has less reason to discount. The escalator rides on that assumption. The counter is to make the estate look less permanently captive, with a costed modernization study that signals the walk away is real even if it is years out.
Captivity is a position, not a fact.
Old Adabas and Natural contracts often define capacity and usage loosely, which is fine until an audit reads the ambiguity in the vendor's favor. Tightening the metric definition at renewal closes the audit exposure that turns a quiet escalator into a sudden true up.
Ambiguity is the vendor's option, not yours.
Decades of contract amendments leave entitlement no one has fully reconciled. You may be paying maintenance on modules or capacity retired long ago. A full inventory against real usage is the first place cost falls on a long lived estate.
A long history hides a lot of shelfware.
Without a ceiling, the annual increase is the vendor's to set, and on a captive estate that is a strong position. A cap tied to a published index removes the silent compounding from every remaining year, which on a long held estate is the highest value term available.
On a captive estate, the cap is everything.
④ The increase you could not walk away from
A captive estate pays the escalator it cannot refuse. Until it caps the rate. Leverage on Adabas and Natural is built, not found.
Typical reduction negotiated on renewal spend
Mainframe spend negotiated on the buyer side
Engagements delivered since 2019
Because legacy agreements commonly carry an annual maintenance escalator, and the estate is hard to leave quickly, which limits the leverage that would hold the increase down. Adabas and Natural now operate as a standalone business under Silver Lake, focused on the mainframe estate. A captive base and a built in escalator are the conditions under which support compounds quietly.
Adabas and Natural launched standalone in early 2025 under Silver Lake, separate from ARIS and from the webMethods and StreamSets assets that moved to IBM. A standalone unit focused on a mature estate typically optimizes for predictable recurring revenue, which makes the escalator and baseline central. It does not lower cost on its own; the cap and reconciled baseline still have to be negotiated. See our Software AG license negotiation page.
Leverage comes from reconciling entitlement against real usage, capping the escalator at a published index or a low ceiling, and tightening audit exposure where legacy metric definitions are ambiguous. A credible long term modernization study, even one you do not act on yet, signals the estate is not permanently captive, which changes the renewal tone.
No. The next renewal resets the conversation. Inventory entitlement, close the audit ambiguity, and cap the increase, and the quiet compounding stops adding to a baseline nobody tested. Our Software AG hub maps the levers for a captive Adabas and Natural estate.
Related: Rocket Software support escalation · the true cost of doing nothing · what subscription and support buys · Software AG hub · Software AG license negotiation
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