>>Receiving a fair price on any product requires a *credible* market >>alternative in *your* particular situation. Things that bring >>credibility to the discussion: >>- a project actually underway to switch from one vendor to >>another >I would consider it a strategic error to stick with a vendor that has >forced you to that extreme. If the project is already underway then, >IMHO, you are better of proceeding to switch.
That's the likely outcome, yes. But I didn't phrase that bullet in sufficient detail. Let's suppose there are three vendors: Vendor A, Vendor B, and Vendor C. Your company has products from Vendors A and B installed but, currently, no products from Vendor C. Your company is 12+ months from contract expiration with Vendor A. If you have a project underway to switch one product from Vendor B to Vendor C, that might put the "fear of God" into Vendor A and thus demonstrate that you are perfectly capable of switching, especially if Vendor C is the likely beneficiary. Otherwise a vendor may not view a switching threat as credible. - - - - - Timothy F. Sipples Consulting Enterprise Software Architect, z9/zSeries IBM Japan, Ltd. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
