Guy - We succeeded somewhat with converting Quiz code to Cobol.
 It was more difficult than we had imagined.  One nice thing
though, we learned a lot about how QUIZ probably works.  If you
have only a half dozen screens/reports then your cost should be
less than 10K to get those converted if they are not to
difficult.  And if that is less than sum of the following you
may want to consider it:
 
1. your upgrade costs
2. your annual maintenance costs * 10  (To give you a NPV) cost
3. anticipated future upgrade costs
4. Cost of extra hardware required to run the software
 
Items 3 and 4 are hard to get firm numbers but are necessary to
determine the real costs to continue the application.  It is
also important to note that item 2 is correct.  I am only
trying to give a Net Present Value cost and this a easy
estimate but your organization may have a different way to
evaluate it.
 
Also I would request my contract programmer to fix price the
project.  The replacement software has been fully defined.  The
numbers should be obvious at this point.
 
Small users of Powerhouse on big machines can always run these
numbers and probably justify the elimination of the
application.
 
The real difficult position is when all your business
applications run on PH.  It becomes nearly impossible to
replace your language.  Also if you are not developing
applications all the time with PH, then you are not receiving
the full advantage of PH.
 
By the way, we spend about 75% of our time in PH, 25% in
Cobol/IMAGE/VPLUS with about a dozen different clients.  I have
bought PH twice and my wife's company bought it on my
reccommendation.  I have trained dozens of programmers and
analysts in using PH.  I believe PH is a good product, but the
numbers have to be there and continue to be valid on every
upgrade that you do.
 
Please contact me for further information.
 
Terry Warns
WL Software
Troy,  MI 48098
1-800---397--7097