Re: George Farr declares feature specific pricing on horizon for WDSC

BTW, I am installing my COMPLETELY FREE WDSC 7.0 as I type...

Aaron,
I'm confused. In the whole arguement about where WDSC is going, many
have noted we can't get something for free...

pays for the upgrades.
What is "free"???
What I see is IBM's replacement product to PDM has many great features,

Until IBM puts it in writing, how does one evaluate their offer?
Right now, a couple Advanced Edition licenses can exceed the cost of
the hardware & OS combined.
I absolutely agree IBM must do something.
jim franz

Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 9:08 AM

Hi all,

I was at the Systemideveloper.com conference last week and was able to

attend George Farr's keynote address. In the address there were a boatload of comments made by him that I plan on mulling over in the next few months,

but one in particular that I thought was interesting was the approach
getting money to continue WDSC development.

In the end we all know that the developers on the WDSC product line don't
work for free, and the more burden they are to IBM the less throughput we
will get from them (read they won't be able to hire and expand as much as
they would like).   In an effort to address this George stated they are
looking to have customers pay for certain features.  For example if you
wanted the new screen designer you will be charged $300/seat for that

feature. Note that is a "pretend" number that simply gives example to where

George foresee's the pricing structure vs. the $4K numbers we were hearing
about the AE purchase.

Looking at it from the big picture I'd say that they are right on the mark

in charging for solid tooling. If I can get second to none tooling, which I

believe they are capable of, that gives me the competitive edge; then I am

willing to dish out the cash. The burden will fall on them though to make a

creative pricing structure that doesn't paint them into a corner - the

opposite corner of their customers. What I mean by that is there are a wide variety of shops out there with varying environments. What about the shops that have very few developers or zero tooling budget? You don't simply want

high paying customers using your product, because widespread adoption has

nearly as much benefit as getting money - hard to have one without the other

in today's tooling market.  I would love to see them go with a model that
gives the first 3 to 5 licenses of WDSC to shops COMPLETELY FREE.  That

would make it so small shops wouldn't be paying the expense and larger shops would be able to have their R&D teams fully test the features to ensure they wanted to make the purchase, or simply let the few that need to tool have it

at a reasonable price.  The other option of course would be to simply have
site/machine licenses similar to how we have the compilers.  Maybe instead

of going with a per seat license the simply charge $4K for a single machine

which would be attractive for shops with more than 14 developers.

In the end our WANT to pay IBM money for features totally depends on us

seeing things that will save us time/money in the long run. George made it

very clear in his address that we "..will not be disappointed".  We shall
have to see what comes out of big blue in the next two years.  BTW, I am
installing my COMPLETELY FREE WDSC 7.0 as I type this:-)

On last note I wonder if they will query customers to see what they are
willing to pay in an effort to be in check with what the market will bear.

Thoughts?
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
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