Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 09:30:37 -0600
From: "Cynthia Fowler" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Software upgrade costs.
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This is the point I was trying (feebly) to make. We got stung on this on =
one product because we failed to check before our upgrade. Unfortunately, =
our business is so tied to that particular software product we had no =
choice to upgrade it.=20

However, on another product, we dropped support for it on all 5 of our =
HP3000's because the cost of upgrade on only one of them was over $35k. =
With five machines involved and because we had an HP solution available =
(requiring a bit of work to get it to work for us, but it was workable), =
so we dropped the 3rd party completely. The cost was not worth it and the =
sales rep would not budge....not even a multiple machine discount. So we =
bid him goodbye.  We would do it on other products if the situation came =
up again. When a 3rd party vendor gets greedy and won't work with you and =
considering their tier structures for the most part DO NOT coincide with =
HP's tier pricing, who needs them. But let's not rehash the tier pricing =
issue. The HP3000-L archives are full of posts regarding that.

>>> <[log in to unmask]> 11/17 6:19 PM >>>
>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