Al Sherkow wrote: >I can see an ISV being interested if they are competing with IBM products >that are charged based on SCRT reports.
How about also if they're not competing but want to make life easier, simpler, and more streamlined for their treasured customers so that they don't have to perform operations and administration in a different way just for one oddball vendor? Yes, I suppose, for example, a vendor can charge for software based on the number of hairs on the CEO's head, or chin, or feet, assessed three times per year except during leap years, when it's two times per year. But why? A vendor is not required to go along with industry norms, but there ought to be a *damn* good reason, in the mutual interest of the customer and vendor, to deviate from such norms. In my view there aren't many/any damn good, general reasons. >But the infrastructure to support monthly, rather than the typical annual >invoicing is a big undertaking. SCRT provides monthly utilization reports, not monthly invoices. There is absolutely no requirement that a participating software vendor invoice monthly. If you've agreed with your customer to invoice annually, no problem. You file the 12 monthly SCRT reports you receive in your files, look at all 12 once a year, and send an annual invoice. For example. Or ask for submission of every October's SCRT report, for example, then send an annual invoice based on that month. Commercial arrangements are up to you and your customers, subject to legal requirements of course. I believe Charles was arguing the opposite point of view, in essence. One advantage with monthly invoicing is "faster failure." That is, if there's a commercial dispute, the customer and vendor will reach that point about 6 months faster, on average, with monthly invoicing versus annual. If you like that "faster failure" aspect of monthly invoicing, you're all set. SCRT supports it. If you don't, you're still all set with SCRT. If you want something in between, like quarterly invoicing, you're still all set. SCRT doesn't help you quite as much with weekly or biweekly invoicing if that's what you want, but even that is commercially possible. My home electricity provider reads the meter only every two months but bills me every month. The non-meter bill is a calculated estimate and is "close enough." Whether I slightly "underpaid" or "overpaid" the non-meter bill -- either way -- it gets trued up after the next meter reading. Everybody is happy. The electricity company gets paid, and I get hot water and the other wonderful benefits of electricity. >While I'm a "small" vendor I've already encountered licensees trying to >cheat me. Yes, that happens occasionally, to "big" vendors as well. It's called a commercial dispute. The problem is that if you try to engineer a product delivery and support solution that forecloses all "cheating" scenarios, you might drive away all your customers. And that is one solution, I suppose. With no customers, you won't have any commercial disputes. ;) There are even occasions, hopefully rare, when the *best* you can hope for is that you have a commercial dispute -- and then you send that non-paying customer off to collections. That is, the particular customer was never going to pay you anyway, not in any regular, contracted way. But the customer was/is interested in cheating to obtain and use your product. At least then you might collect something from that customer, with the aid of the legal system and a collections firm. The prospect of something is better than the absolute guarantee of nothing. As an analogy, imagine designing a retail store that 100% prevents *attempted* shoplifting. That might be possible, but would anyone want to shop there? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM z Systems, AP/GCG/MEA E-Mail: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
