Wirt Atmar <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
[snip]
>And it has represented a substantial drag on the installed base's ability to
>upgrade their machinery into the very powerful class of machines. I know that
>HP has talked quite seriously to some of the more egregious offenders. But,
>from my external vantage point, I can't say that HP's discussions have had
>any real effect.
>
>Ultimately, the problem will only be solved by precisely the manner that
>Alfredo suggested: when a sufficient number of people vote with their
>pocketbooks. But I do believe that the core of the problem isn't with the
>tiered pricing model, per se, but with the level of committment that the
>vendor is making to the HP3000 market.
The really BIG problem is that a customer who chooses to abandon such
"egregious offenders" will probably also abandon the HP3000 and go to the
AS/400 (yes, Virginia, to an AS/400, of all things, due to the fact that
general-ledger types are more inclined to use boring but reliable
environments than to use -- or be used by? -- sexy but unreliable ones).
On another (but related subject) Wirt also mentioned:
>The original request was for a vendor to write back and defend tiered pricing
>as a justifiable pricing model. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I do
>clearly believe that tiered pricing can easily be a fair and justifiable
>pricing mechanism, and has real merit as a mechanism to attract new users
>into the HP3000 fold.
I had a few nightmares since my last post regarding the fact that Adager
did NOT have tiered pricing, due to my laziness in implementing a
water-tight mechanism to enforce all the nuances. But this morning I
jumped out of bed with the sudden realization that I was totally wrong in
my belief. In fact, Adager has had its own tiered pricing system since
1979, way before the HP3000 community's time for big-time -- and big-ticket
-- tiered pricing schemes. It's funny how the subconscious works, because
I took this momentous decision in Vancouver (Canada) after a conversation
with Bob Green, who advised me to market "what was ready as a product on
that particular day" instead of waiting forever for the full power of
Adager.
Since then, Adager has had a subsidized "welcome to the fold" system at an
unbelievably low price for people who don't need the FULL power of Adager's
awesome transformation capabilities. This fully-tiered system is based on
HOW MUCH ADAGER POWER YOU WANT, not on HOW POWERFUL YOUR MACHINE IS.
The name of the "welcome to the fold" package is "Adager Model One" and
consists of a substantial Adager subset for vital day-to-day maintenance
tasks such as capacity changes, repacking/reorganizing, database copying,
dataset moving, dataset erasing, reblocking, schema decompilation, and so
on, including the full-fledged database therapy functions that Wirt
mentioned as "being used only once in a blue moon" (thank God). Please
notice that this "lowest tier" fully supports HP's latest technologies such
as Jumbo datasets, dynamic dataset expansion, SQL, etc., as well as NetBase
shadowing and other advanced features of Adager. In other words, I don't
restrict the POWER of Adager's Model-One functions -- I just restrict WHICH
Adager functions are provided with Model One.
How is this for an unexpected twist? Now I feel much better, knowing that
Wirt and I are on the same side regarding this tiered-pricing issue (with
different accents, perhaps). And the best part is that I didn't have to do
anything differently TODAY, because I did it 18 years ago, without thinking
of the far-reaching consequences.
It's all a matter of interpretation :-)
_______________
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| |
| r | Alfredo [log in to unmask]
| e | http://www.adager.com
| g | F. Alfredo Rego Tel 208 726-9100
| a | Manager, R & D Labs Fax 208 726-2822
| d | Adager Corporation
| A | Sun Valley, Idaho 83353-3000 U.S.A.
| |
|_______________|
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