On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 03:57:45PM -0800, Jens W. Sandmann wrote:
>
> SuSE Enterprise Business Partners do have access to the SW under
> conditions very similiar to the ones you describe.

"Business Partners" also have significant revenue objectives attached
to their participation in the program, which often excludes those of
us who try to maintain a vendor-neutral approach to providing
solutions to customers. There is *no* way that I or others can commit
a revenue level to a company based on code that we haven't
seen. "Trust me" doesn't work in this economy, no matter how good your
previous releases have been.

I think it's fair that SuSE receive a reasonable opportunity to get
the support revenue and fund future development, but you're also
getting yourselves into a situation where your current position as the
leading S/390 Linux vendor is likely to be lost, especially if you
alienate the system integrators and consultants that recommend your
products. If you can't get the code to become familiar with it without
the big bucks contract, then it's unlikely to be the solution that the
SI community will recommend.

> >
> > It's not that 11K per engine is an issue (it's still a lot cheaper than the
> > alternatives)
>
> It really is rather in-expensive by comparison, given that the z900 IFL
> for it costs far more than 10 times as much and a VM license for such
> substantially more than $11,000.
>
> > It's going from $150 to  $11,000 per engine that seems a bit extreme
> > (and imho a bad strategic move).
>
> You are, unfortunately, comparing apples and pears. While the Media Kit of
> the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 1 was indeed priced at $150, the SuSE
> Linux Enterprise Server 7 product comes with a range of services
> (maintenance, installation support ...) included which make up the main
> part of the price. Btw. the maintenance charge for your z900 engine was
> actually lowered from $24,000 (1-2 engines) to $11,500.

This is the crux of the matter, actually. No one's really questioning
the need for support contracts, but the jump from $150 media kits to
$11K just to get the distribution is the problem -- it's a perception
issue, and one that the marketplace you've entered has been
conditioned to find objectionable, partially by SuSE's own works in
the past.


> > Distributors need to be more patient for the $$$$.
> > Dave Myers
> What about the consultants?

I think that's exactly the point.  If we can't get your code, you're
not going to be a recommended solution. If you don't work with the
integrators, then you're out of the game from our perspective --
vendors that make themselves hard to deal with are much less likely to
be the dominant solution, and unlike some other hard-to-deal-with
companies, there are obvious alternatives who are easier to deal
with.

-- db

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