Re: Ridiculous software transfer fees (was EDI)

Yep. Several of my customers do just this.

Ironic that: Gentran is losing money because if they charged $5K or even $6K You'd hop onto the i version in a heartbeat. But they don't so you feed them only 3K. It's their own pricing scheme that costs them money.

There are, of course, issues between i and the PC. Sure it usually runs but when you IPL for example the PCs disconnect. And the PCs are a cost and need their own fixes and security and such. In reality the $7K you saved is likely cut in half or more but it doesn't matter because the initial outlay is so far apart.

So you save some money, gain complexity, and feed money to the PC vendor and your support staff. Sterling is leaving this money on the table, something all sales people are taught never to do. And it's even worse for the upgrades. Sterling could be making a few dollars on your upgrade. Most customers will pay a maintenance or transfer fee that is reasonable but when it's based solely on the Capability of the target server rather than the actual use of it, then pricing is wrong. (IMHO)

- Larry

ed stevens wrote:

When we were looking for an EDI package, the pc based
Gentran was about 3k and the as/400 version was over
10k. We went with the pc based software. Then its just
a matter of pulling/pushing data from/to the pc.
Gentran can be scripted to run on it's own so this
works nicely. This allowed us to do upgrades and model
changes without an additional penny going to Sterling
for hardware changes.

Something to consider.