In article <[log in to unmask]>,
[log in to unmask] writes
>>People keep writing these kinds of stories on this list. As a vendor, the
>>primary take-home lesson that I'm slowly getting from all of this is: if
>>people are willing to put up with such increases, we've gotta raise our
>>prices!
>
>>Wirt Atmar
>
>No, that's not the message.  If people check their third-party vendor policies
>before upgrading, they sometimes make other choices based on the
>answers.  One answer I see among companies I'm familiar with is to put
>off the upgrade as long as possible, while looking for ways to get more
>out of the current machines.
>
>Another answer is one I'm seeing right now, at a company which is still on
>a Series 70 because of the outrageous price of an upgrade for a certain
>report writer (guess which one!).  Faced with an imminent Y2K problem
>and concern about running the company on unsupported hardware and
>software, the decision was finally made to upgrade to a RISC processor.
>The solution to the outrageously-priced report writer is to dump it, even
>though that means identifying, deciphering, and rewriting about 16 years'
>worth of reports (probably in QueryCalc).
>
>This is not the first client I've had that finally had enough.  Another
>company had the whole package, transaction processor and screen
>formatter as well as the report writer.  It was their only language, but
>they dumped it rather than pay the upgrade cost, and rewrote
>everything.
>
>Some managers do look beyond the current quarter and realize that
>it won't take more than a year or two to recover the cost of replacing
>exorbitantly-priced tools, and start showing savings.
>
>Cecile Chi
>
Have you tried costing out the option of buying a small processor to
write the OPRW code on, and just a runtime licence for the production
box?

AIUI, this can be a lot cheaper than the average 'conventional' upgrade
costs on a big processor.

And all that rewriting effort!

It seems a shame to let the cost of gouging negate ongoing software...
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