As someone who has been on the vendor side of this one, let me say that "$5000" is only a small part of the cost, and if you do your cost justification based on that, then any perceptive manager is going to give you a thumbs down.
The real, total cost includes: - Management time to evaluate, negotiate, and purchase - Sysprog time to install, secure, configure, etc. - Training time. Takes no training? Really? Not even a memo to announce its availability? - Help desk time (particularly if you scrimped on the training - some people can screw up anything) - Cost of future maintenance - Management time to negotiate future upgrades, etc. - Risk that you raise future maintenance charges, upgrade charges, etc. - Risk that the product causes conflicts/problems with a critical system (yeah, you know it won't, but that pointy-headed boss sees that as a salesman promise) - Other undefined risks (a BIG deal in big corporations - nobody ever got fired for NOT buying your product) I'm not putting down your product. I'm just telling anyone cost-justifying it to their management to be sure to include ALL the costs. Frankly, you might consider raising your prices! As the above cost to the customer may well exceed $100,000, it's a shame the authors/IP owners are only getting 5% of that! Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dave Salt Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 1:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Cost of tools (was: Migrating from OPS/MVS to AF/OPERATOR) >Bruce A. Black wrote: >IMHO, its not so simple. You are assuming that by installing such a tool, >it would automatically and enthusiastically be used by all or most of those >programmers. Personally I find that inertia is a major factor. My experience is that 90% of programmers use the upgraded ISPF/PDF interface almost immediately after the new option is added to their ISPF menu. The other 10% eventually come around, just as they eventually came around to using ISPF option 3.4. Human nature is such that if a tool is not only far more powerful than whatever they were using before, but is also far easier to use, inertia is quickly overcome. To cite examples from two ends of the spectrum, there is one shop with 1,000 programmers and all 1,000 programmers use the upgraded ISPF/PDF interface. There is another shop with 20 programmers and all 20 programmers use the upgraded interface. Given that usage is strictly voluntary and no-one at either site went on any training courses whatsoever, this is a pretty remarkable achievement. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
