The dilemma you face with renewals, maintenance, and replacement of data
interchange software is the time and costs sunk in setting up maps. You
have to trade off the cost of getting current (which might be a
smart investment) against the cost and time of moving to a different
solution while still dealing with the incumbent solution.
A smart vendor would build conversion tools to import competitors' maps;
something with 80% coverage would be a huge competitive advantage.
Yes, TLI licensing sucks but then Forta's does too. Forta failed to
mention they wouldn't transfer my license to another box when I stopped
paying after years of 35% "maintenance" on a static product...and when my
host changed boxes, I was SOL. I lost a product; they lost a customer and
a recommendation to potential customers. Private equity...'nuff said.
Unless the supported business is changing rapidly and/or the developer is
rolling out lots of great new features and/or the support is
extraordinarily good, high software maintenance fees signal the vendor is
using your bucks to develop some new product you don't care about. You
can't justify 35% on an app that indents source code and does some
RPG-to-ILE RPG conversion--in two years there was one feature change for a
new ILE RPG function. I don't have a problem with a reasonable maintenance
fee; in fact, I want to pay it if it keeps my vendor healthy and able to
support me.
People laugh when I assert software depreciates. It's just source code,
they say. RPG is upward-compatible, they say. Well, maybe. Forget the
tax implications: depreciation is supposed to fund the replacement of an
asset that's no longer economically viable. If your EDI software is
flat-file X12 via BSC communications and knows nothing of XML or JSON, it's
past the end of its useful life.
Maintenance fees, while often painful, may be worthwhile if they keep your
version up-to-date.
Good luck!
On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 at 12:22 PM ubelhor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <
ubelhor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello:
Does any one know a good resource contact for upgrading older IBM i TLI -
Trusted Link. We are in process of upgrading and could use extra hands.
There used to be a TLI group and I couldn't find info on it. I couldn't
find a Linkedin group either.
Regards,Laura
Laura A. UbelhorPresidentConsultech Services,
Inc.www.consultechservicesinc.com
phone 248-701-7410
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