First of all, from a Software Sales Rep's perspective, I want to thank
everyone for "staying in bounds" and harnessing thier emotions on this
potentially volatile issue.  I feel the thread has been mainly constructive
and objective.

As far as tiered pricing is concerned, I think it all depends on
perspective.  Should a developer price a product so that everyone pays the
same price as what the smallest potential user can afford?  This would limit
the resources and motivation to enhance and support the product.  Should the
pricing then be what the largest user with a seemingly unlimited budget is
willing to pay for a robust product with full support?  This will insure
that there are plenty of resources available for support and enhancements,
but will lock out a lot of users that could benefit from the solution and
would be willing to pay a fair price for the utility they would receive.  If
you set an arbitrary fixed cost somewhere in the middle, there will still be
those at the high end losing out on functionality that will not be built
into the product but that they would be willing and able to pay for, and
those at the lowest end paying for more than than the functionality they can
utilize.  The only group getting a fair value is that small slice that
happens to sit in the middle range where the pricing is set (until of course
they upgrade their sytems and want higher level functionality for their
increasingly complex enterprise).

I believe that tiered pricing is a reasonable compromise if you look at it
from a little different perspective.  Third party software competes with
other purchases for a percentage of the overall IS budget.  As that budget
grows the value of the utility derived from the software tends to increase.
For example, if you increase your CPU size due to increased users or more
processing being done on the platform, doesn't the cost of downtime and data
loss increase?  Following that logic, doesn't the value of a backup or
disaster recovery solution increase accordingly?  I know the math doesn't
work in every situation, but it does seem to me like a fair way of paying
for the functionailty or value you derive from the product "as you go".

Time to get down off my soapbox and back to work.


"These opinions are entirely my own."


Allen Cintron
Quest Software
"Expect a Solution"
949-718-2454 direct
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