Re: Innovis EDI software

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Pete,

I had a similar problem last July.  There was a whole thread about it on 
Midrange-L at the time. Here's a link:
http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200707/msg00431.html

Ultimately, we resolved the problem by switching to what they called an 
LPAR license (even though we're not using an LPAR... not exactly sure 
how that works).  With this license, we paid them something like $7000 
and they promised that from this point on, we wouldn't have to deal with 
the insane upgrade fees anymore, because they don't apply to this LPAR 
licensing model.

But even the $7k seems more than a little ridiculous just to transfer 
from one machine to another.  But Inovis maintains that they price by 
the CPW, not by the software tier.  They say that they do this because 
customers who previously ran on a P10 (for example) might no longer need 
a P10 because the machines are faster, so they'll buy a P05 and run just 
as many EDI transactions, and Inovis feels that they were ripped off, so 
they changed their pricing strategy to be based purely on CPW.  That's 
they're story.

I don't agree with their philosophy, because I consider it normal 
business to replace a machine every few years.  After all, there's wear 
and tear on a machine.  Since downtime is costly, you need to replace it 
every several years, and without exception, the new machine is going to 
be faster than the old one.  The fact that Inovis wants to charge you 
huge upgrade fees when you're just maintaining the status quo is absurd.

But, we were kinda stuck with Inovis, since the alternative was to 
re-write all of our software that relies on them.  For someone who is 
just starting out, I suggest not using Inovis, at least until they come 
up with a better way of doing licensing.

JMHO.


Pete Massiello wrote:
> We have an account going from a 270 which is a P05 tier group to a 515 which
> is also a P05 tier.  They use Innovis for their EDI, and they wish to charge
> the customer $11,000 for keys.  No new functionality, customer is already on
> maintenance, customer will not have any more EDI transactions, customer will
> get nothing from this at all.  Every other vendor that we had on the 270 had
> no charge, or a small paperwork charge (which is fine).
>
> Has anyone else had this nightmare dealing with Innovis?  Any other EDI
> software providers that you prefer.
>
> Thanks
>
> Pete Massiello