The Total Cost of Ownership Trap in Enterprise AI SaaS

The license fee is the number vendors want you to focus on. It's usually the smallest number in the real calculation. I've evaluated a lot of enterprise software. The thing I've learned to do first, before looking at feature comparisons or vendor demos, is build a TCO model. Not because I enjoy spreadsheets. Because the gap between "what this costs to buy" and "what this costs to own" is where most enterprise software decisions go wrong, and that gap is unusually large in AI SaaS products righ...