> >Some have never been able to afford the product and therefore can not say >this is such a bad thing. I have tried to get the price lowered three times to >something reasonable. The first case it would be $435K for on an IBM 9672 >which only cost me $800K. The cheaper alternative was to upgrade the >machine to a z900-101 which also cost me a bit less than $800K. The second >time the price had not changed, and recently for it was still well over $350K >for just a z900-101. I kept pointing out that if I would have become a >customer back in 2001, they would have been getting recurring revenue. Their >strategy is to get the most money up front and go lean in the out years. > >My SYSPROG shop has 15 Compuware contractors (great folks) and it did not >give me any kind of discount or some incentive to cut me some kind of >reasonable deal. So maybe this is for the best in long haul for the industry. I >doubt if this will change any pricing policy until the company is bought out or >goes down in flames. > I must correct something said above for I was reminded that indeed there was an offer of $125K made to entice us to buy Strobe. The maintenance and upgrade charges would be based on the higher numbers though. It was rejected by management and it begs a broader question to be asked. Does one buy performance software or throw the money at hardware. In this case the money was applied to two new z9BCs because of the need to buy them anyway. The cost of hardware is way down now that zAAPs & zIIPs are priced in the $40K-50K range. Upgrading from 688 MIPS to 945 MIPS would then have brought on upgrade charges which for the other products we run was significant. Memory is $3-4K/GB and maybe less now. One can covers a bunch of programming sins with a little bit of inexpensive hardware compared with software.
I am hoping Compuware comes out with more of an explanation of the Strobe support for the future; no other product does ADABAS. But then if one can dump ADABAS in the future, then other cheaper products become available for consideration. What I am hoping for in the future is the Bill Gates strategy (sell an entire operating for $79) and make billions. What if Strobe was so reasonable, that every z/OS shop in the world could afford to use it and would not live without it. The volume would make up for the change in price. MXG has proven this is a great strategy to use. Jim ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
