You Cannot Control The Component Market, But You Can Control What Sits On Top Of It

Executive Summary

• Component inflation is outside anyone's control, but the software licensing model layered on top of the hardware is a buyer's choice, and it determines whether inflation hits you once or twice.
• Capacity-based storage licensing and per-core compute licensing act as inflation multipliers, indexing your software cost to the exact thing that is rising.
• Subscription licensing penalises the rational response to a shortage, which is to run existing hardware for longer, while perpetual and open-source models reward asset longevity.
• The exposure bites hardest in defence, where fixed budgets, certification lock-in, and decade-long service lives concentrate all remaining cost flexibility in the software stack.