"kevin furze" > I personally have NEVER seen a price list, having said that, I wish > that a BASIC price list would be published and then a note to say "we > will always sell at these prices, BUT talk to us if you want a better > price" at least that way, everyone would know a base starting price > As an ISC VAR, I have a very detailed and complex price list from InterSystems. This list is updated on a regular basis as new options are developed. The basic problem with the price list is that it is very complex. Depending on the functionality, you can pay a 10 times greater price for a single user license. If you look at the price list, the more sophisticated the license, the higher the price. This is reasonable since an complex system deployed over multiple machines requires vastly more support than a simple embedded deployment. What this price list tell us is what it will cost (less our VAR discount) to deploy various licenses to our clients. While complex, all the information needed is there.
Also, bear in mind that, unlike some of their competitors, pricing starts at zero. While you have an obligation to purchase a development system, this can be deferred while you evaluate the technology. The downloadable version won't support all the enterprise features but it is more than enough for basic development and testing. I suspect the reason they do not publish a public price list is that the current list would only confuse potential buyers. Further, by its nature, the price list does not incorporate the flexibility ISC has always shown when working with developers and end users. While I still have some issues with them on this subject, they do recognize that modern software deployments differ wildly in the value the underlying database technology delivers to the end user. A currency trader sitting all day in front of a Cache-built system has a high value relationship with the technology. A person who grabs a stock quote from that same system via a transient web service has a trivial relationship. There pricing system is not perfect but it is flexible enough to address the difference in the two value propositions above. The key to ISC pricing is that they (always, in my experience) price their product fairly. They may stumble for a while (especially with new features or technology) but at the end of the day, you pay a fair price. I am sure that if someone built a $60 single user video game that required a single user license, ISC would figure out a way to make that customer's product deployable. Another point is support and upgrades. These, over time, can cost more than the initial purchase price. > come on ISC - what about it, publish a BASE price list somewhere ! > It exists but if you saw it you would not be signficantly more enlightened than you are now! -- John Bertoglio Senior Consultant co-laboratory office: 503-538-8691 mobile: 503.330.6713 fax: 503.538.8691 www.co-laboratory.com > > kev >
