At 08:23 AM 10/27/2000 -0600, Dave Darnell wrote:
>Yes! The company to which I referred has been approached a few times to make
>some of their systems commercially available.  This division has also seen
>the systems I alluded to adopted by other divisions, which is a big deal
>because of all the mergers over the years.

In a previous life I worked for a huge manufacturing corporation, which,
after much internal debate, decided to make one of their systems (which I
supported) commercially available.

Those in favor to this argued that:
1.  The company can recover its investment in the package.
2.  By selling it to the company's suppliers, everyone was working with a
common tool.

Those opposed to selling it outside the company argued that:

1.  This system gave the company a competitive advantage.  Many of the
suppliers also worked with competitors, so this could dilute the
competitive advantage the system gave us.
2.  The system was tailored specifically to the company's requirements and
business model.  Selling it outside the company would result in pressure to
change the system in ways that may not suit the company.
3.  The staff supporting it had its hands full doing internal support.
4.  The company is a manufacturing company, not a software company, and
should concentrate its resources on its core business.

The company finally set up an arrangement with a computer company to sell
the package.  The computer company would handle releasing and outside
support, my company would do development, internal support, and support of
the computer company.  My company also had the right to cancel any sale it
felt was not in its best interest.

This did not work out very well.  Not may packages were sold, so the
revenue was not was expected.  After a couple of years, the computer
company went bankrupt, stranding the users.

I don't think I have ever heard of a company, which is not specifically in
the computer business, successfully selling internally developed systems to
the outside world.