______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Desperately seeking Susan (980/400 or /300 ne
Author: Therm-O-Link <[log in to unmask]> at ~INTERNET
Date: 1/22/97 12:01 PM
On Wed, 22 Jan 1997 16:21:32 +0200, Neil Harvey <[log in to unmask]>
writes:
>Time to insist on User-Based pricing, I'd say.
>I have an intense dislike for this upgrade mentality, as well as stupid
>copy protection schemes that ALWAYS fail when first installed, and this
>ALWAYS occurs over weekends/at midnight when the Vendor offers ABOLUTELY
>no support.
<snip>
To which Jim Phillips added ...
Hear, Hear! (Sound of applause)
I could not agree with you more. Can any of the software vendors
(including HP) supply a defense of the tiered software pricing
scheme? One of my predessor's last acts was to upgrade our 922
to a 948 (I know it wasn't a wise move, but *I* didn't do it).
When I got here it was running like a dog, because we left the
24 MB of memory from the 922 in place (the 948 requires a minimum
of 64 MB of memory). By the time we got through making the 948
legal, it cost me $13,000 for a new COBOL compiler license (from
HP). And all I got for my $13,000 was a new certificate. No added
staff. No added users. Nothing. Well, I can still call the RC
and hope that someone there knows what COBOL is.
And, now, my $.02 ...
I'll add my voice to this mix in support of a more sane upgrade
strategy - particularly from ISV's/3rd-party developers. I cringe
every time we need to upgrade our 99x (our 980 has remained static for
some time :( :( ). Besides the hardware costs, additional ISV license
upgrade fees are into the tens of thousands, and annual maintenance
costs per product usually also increase. HP has not charged us a dime
in software license upgrades (both machines already carry unlimited
user licenses). We did, however, look to upgrade the 980 to a
remarketed 99x machine, but our sales rep was too embarassed to send me
the quote because of the cost of the MPE license upgrade (she tried to
get it deep-sixed, or at least reduced, with no success) - even though
the current configuration and pricing guides show the boxes in the same
hardware tier, as I recall.
I, too, would love to hear a cogent argument from a vendor for this
strategy. For the increased cost, there are no additional capabilities
offered in the software, development costs should be no different, IMO,
and we typically don't slam dunk another 100-200 users on the system at
the time of an upgrade. The only reason I've heard for the upgrade
costs is to conform to a pre-existing license pricing strategy based
upon hardware tier. My prevailing thought is that this is the cash cow
for many developers.
Lee Gunter [log in to unmask]
HMO Oregon
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