Mike Shumko wrote:
>What do you expect to get for your support dollars?

One thing that finally seems to be happening is that people are
now recognizing that there are three fees related to software
rather than just two:

1) License fees (one time fee, lease, or rent; upgrades, etc.)
2) Maintenance (bug fixes, support for new OS versions, etc.)
3) Assistance (telephone support or other actual assistance)

We're used to thinking of #2 and #3 together as "support", and many
vendors today charge a single price for both, but more and more
organizations are going to be demanding that these be broken out
separately, since they are starting to be required to account
for them that way.

Various laws (taxation, UCC, etc.) seem to be slowly catching on to
how software works, and the days when a vendor could simply charge
you %20 of your purchase price per year in perpetuity just so that
you could continue to use what you already paid for are likely to
come to an end.

People are going to expect to be able to purchase Maintenance without
Assistance if they so choose.

Many of the large vendors have already made this transition (HP for
example) but most of the small and medium sized software providers
don't seem to have gotten there yet.

G.