On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:40:12 -0800, Charles Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I have a lot of experience as a mainframe software vendor. I totally >understand what you are saying. > >The other side of the coin is that some customers abuse software vendors. At >my former company, we had several of what we called "the trial from h---." A >prospect would run a trial forever, with excuses like "my boss is in a bad >mood, I'm not going to bring a license in there for him to sign today." If >the salesman after months and months of exasperation threatened to send him >a legal letter, he would say "I can tell you if you do that we'll never buy >your product." The poor salesman would not know what to do, and the free >trial would drag on and on and on. Our average 30-day trial went from about >180 days to 90 days when we added an expiration date, and that was a good >thing. > >Also, when we added checking to our product, an amazing number of customers >surfaced who "had no idea that group was running your product on that box." > >Yes, our licensing worked so that the serial number check was not totally >"hard." The product would run on any serial number with a warning. I am >fully aware of the "what if we have a disaster at dark oh thirty and are up >to our butts in alligators without having to track you down for a key?" >issue. Charles Do not take this personnaly But we don't care ( sorry about that ) about the sharks robbing the poor salesmen We all agree to trials with an expiring key . But once we have a contract , i do not accept to be taken hostage by a key with a serial number . It took me 5 hours to replace 2 z/990 by 2 x z9 but it has taken 3 weeks of my time ( and it is not over ) to get keys for various product . I have thrown one vendor for this , and i got a 'géneric key" for another . I also decided to replace a second product before april by one without keys These Keys are part of the reasons we choose HSM ,RMM ,TWS ,RACF or SCLM or any IBM ( or other) product , because we never need keys . And some ISV do give us "generic keys" , so no excuses really . Bruno Bruno(dot)sugliani(at)groupemornay(dot)asso(dot)fr ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
