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Al, BPCS used to tier price. Then we had 21 AS/400's, (not counting the several associated with a division we sold off). BPCS dropped tier pricing, IBM came out with some zippy 400's, our comm infrastructure became robust and now we are down to 8 400's. And response time at the plants is better than their local 400's. However our EDI application still runs standalone on one of these remaining 400's. The cost to move it from the 720 to the 730 is just too astronomical. EDI is kind of hard to user price. It is intended to be a batch process. While it only takes a small handful of people to configure it, many people get the benefits of the data. How would you price that? By the number of mappings? By the number of transaction sets utilized? By the number of Van's? By combining all three plus a base? That might be doable, that might even be fair. In fact I think we had to pay an extra fee one time because we added transaction sets. But I can also see management. "Sorry, it's not in our budget this year to do your outbound PO's because we would have to purchase a package of x number of mappings." By paying a chunk then you just use the heck out of it to get your money's worth. Sharing user profiles, or in other words, generic user profiles? On a user based software? Two things. One, you lose the auditability and two, you rip off the software provider. We stopped using generic profiles when we consolidated machines. Even the people who use the barcode scanners passwords will expire. Rob Berendt ================== "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin MacWheel99@aol.com Sent by: To: midrange-l@midrange.com midrange-l-admin@mi cc: drange.com Fax to: Subject: Re: Fair software pricing models 11/02/2001 10:06 AM Please respond to midrange-l Today we have under 50 users at 2 sites. We had 3 sites until about a year ago. There was a time that I looked into having a separate midrange computer at each site, talking to each other ... theory being performance maximization for all the end users. That idea was rejected when we found out that software vendors, including IBM, could not give us meaningful discount for multiple copies their stuff for same company. 50 users on 1 CPU connected to 3 sites pays for one copy of the software. 50 users on 3 CPU at 3 connected sites pays for 3 copies of the software with at best 5% discount on the 2nd & 3rd copies & no significant discount on the less than 50 users. So today we are on the 1 CPU & remote sites model. Something that has always been a hassle with midrange software pricing is getting a good count of the number of users. Fortunately we have managed so far to work out a deal where we sign some piece of paper with our name on it saying As of date X we have no more than Y humans operating this software at the same time. We have users with multi-session work stations ... you cannot count sessions to get # users. We use an addressing scheme so that WE KNOW which addresses are part of a cluster on the same physical device. We have generic sign-ons intended for inquiry only ... factory floor work stations accessible by anyone to get info on current work orders ... so the same "user" is concurrently signed on at a bunch of sessions, but that "user" at each work station could be 25 people, one at a time. It never has been quite clear to me why pricing based on # users. There are some users whose work load beat the hardware to death with heavy data flow, heavy number crunching software, constantly need modifications, and have pretty sophisticated tech support questions, while there are other user needs whose drain on the system is virtually unnoticeable. Several years ago, before Win 9x was the norm, I had one of my early client server users complaining about some problems with Win 3.0 ... I asked why are you not on Win 3.1 ... he said he had asked for it & they would not give him a straight answer why he could not have it, so I asked the PC manager. The answer was that 1. To simplify maintenance management we have everyone at any one site on the same version of any software. 2. Whenever practical & supported by the supplier, we use site licenses because that is cheaper than buying gazillion copies. 3. Microsoft won't sell us a corporate license that covers all sites of the same enterprise, we have to buy one site license for each office. 4. Management has issued a budget for the PC area - no one is allowed to buy anything & bill it to the company, unless it is inside the budget for PC stuff for that department. 5. We have already blown the budget for this year on stuff executives needed at HQ - there is none left for the folks at the remote sites. 6. That has been the model of behavior for several years. Top executives get their requests in first & there is nothing in the budget for anyone else. I called my buddy who was stuck on Win 3.0 & told him if he wanted Win 3.1 he should buy it out of own pocket, install it on company machine, AND NOT TELL ANYONE WHAT HE HAD DONE, and do good backups in case he comes to work some day & finds it back at Win 3.0. MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac) _______________________________________________ This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options, visit: http://lists.midrange.com/cgi-bin/listinfo/midrange-l or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@midrange.com Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.
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