Joe et al,
I listened to the IBM Webcast presented yesterday afternoon via the
SystemiNetwork. In the Q&A, I asked about licensing. We have WDSC
standard edition and some entitlements to RBDe. I asked about our
entitlements (I guess the proper term is PoE--Proof of Entitlement) to
RBDe. Todd Britton responded, "I'll need to heck the details . . . but
RBDe licenses should entitle you to RDi SOA . . . lets keep in touch on
this."
I quote him, not to hold his foot to the fire, but the response indicates
to me that IBM definitely has not settled on what to do for customers
upgrading from previous releases.
A good point to keep in mind is that IBM is in business to make money.
That's true for just about every organization with the exception of most
non-profits--I happen to work for one. As Joe has pointed out, the
previous one-size-fits-all pricing model wasn't making any money for IBM.
If they can make some money and improve the tools, I'm all for it. Yes,
I'll have to convince management to spend something that they haven't seen
a line-item for in the past. But any business deal should be good for
both parties. IBM has been pretty fair in their dealings. I had done
some EGL work in version 6 so I pursued the entitlements IBM made
available to RBDe when version 7 came out. They came including 12 months
of software maintenance. I'm not happy that I'll have to seek approval
for the maintenance when that expires, but I understand IBM's perspective.
I don't think their trying to alienate their customer base. I'm sure
they'll do their best to take care of us.
My point is IBM is trying to make a business model that will work for the
majority of their customers and make some money they can attribute
specifically to the wonderful tooling their developing for us. As for the
cost, let's wait and see what comes of it.
wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 01/30/2008 08:21:17 PM:
date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:28:08 -0500
from: Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: [WDSCI-L] EGL vs. Java
johnking@xxxxxxx wrote:
Aaron,
RBDE (Rational Business Developer Extension) is the Rational
'plug-in'
that contains the EGL tools. This is in addition to whatever the
IDE will
end up costing.
John, there is no RBDe anymore. At least not as far as System i
developers go (although now I have to admit I'm not sure how it works
with RAD, the non-System i Rational Application Developer). Anyway,
there will be RDi which will be priced roughly equivalently with ADTS,
the green-screen tools, on a per-seat basis. So basically, they've
unbundled SEU/PDM/SDA and then given you an option on whether you want
green screen or GUI tools. Your choice. I suspect that they may even
price ADTS a bit higher, as an incentive to get you to RDi.
midrange.com
