We have a similar situation in that we have plenty of cash for investment, certainly more than some of the companies I have worked with in the past. The license is a small cost compared to the labor that goes into the projects. We also need to factor intraining and support and the like. I think the biggest gain with flex is the ability to have a very maliable interface that is designed to work over a service oriented architecture.
However, I have a learning curve regardless of the platform I choose. I have comparable labor if I use comparable approaches architecture wise. If I use quad processor boxes (I do), and if I have at least 3 zones per production site (I do, dev stg and production) plus local developer installs then I am looking at with current list prices, at least 4 licenses totalling 48,000 per production stream. That doesn't include a 12-30k list range for the CFMX licenses we are using for the middle tier cfc layer. So I am left with the question, do I get an additional 48k of value going with Flex on top of my webservice architecture, versus the open source lazslo. And additionally do I get an additional 78k of value from flex of cfmx over using laszlo on bluedragon (with flashORB)? Then the longer term question is, given the dearth of junior and mid level CF talent do I embark on a migration to J2EE or .NET? Where will the talent levels for Flex and Laszlo be in 2 or 3 years? It is a tough question, but I can tell you this asp.net is free and pre installed, and I know it was hard to say let's spend more money to buy something that does the same function. And that was below the 10k local sign off limit. Above 10k all purchases need business cases ROI and have to be signed off at a MUCH higher level ( our NY divisional HQ) An increase from 12 to 20 would make those decisions easier in a lot of ways. -----Original Message----- From: Scott Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 10:47:32 To:[email protected] Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Flex 1.5 price hehhehe funny, how we all suddnely commence a mass exodus. I won't comment on the price whether its rumour or not, but what I will comment is why I think either way it won't make that much of a difference (well its totally not my own opinion) At present in my company FLEX price tag was never a contention it was more about how will i get it into the business with minimal fuss/training required. If we were to pay $15k per CPU, then so be it. Most software we purchase thats tailored to an enterprise level is more then that - infact the intranet software we bought was higher in price and oh my, is it useless. The major selling point for us was how much $ would it take for someone to create what FLEX has on offer via DHTML or other technology - too much. FLEX is also a hard sell inside businesses. I know here in Australia the local Sales guys really have to put in the hard yards to get the sale made, and the end sale wasn't really worth the time and money invested (flights back and forth etc). I know, why not sell it much cheaper then? well again it would still require the same amount of sale - hand holding - to get over the line and at a lower price - furthermore it would have a larger takeup, which means sales folks will tied up with a lot of tyre kickers instead of real potential meaty customers. On top of this, if it was sold at $5k per CPU or something like that, there would be a lot of support required which in turn eats into profit margins for the product - recoup investments already outlayed. So in reality for a company thats publically listed and has a bunch of folk who demand profit margins, kinda damned if you do, damned if you don't. I am thankful that I have a company who is loaded with $$ so i can play with FLEX, but the future of FLEX is going to ramp up radically and so i can see pass the price tag and consider it a wise investment. -- Regards, Scott Barnes http://www.mossyblog.com http://www.flexcoder.com (Coming Soon) Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ADVERTISEMENT Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Sent via BlackBerry - a service from AT&T Wireless. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
