Re: Tech Support

Greg Hogg writes that his complaint with Informix is not that Tech Support doesn't provide the support he expects in *most* cases. But that he is forced to pay for it to gain the upgrades. It seems that he also states that he is prepared to pay between 25 and 50% to get the upgrades without Tech Support. Now the following is based on the Maintenance charge being 18% a year. This is what it was the last time I checked if this is out of date I apologise. I am also assuming that in most ongoing system development and application upgrade environments there will be a requirement to upgrade at least every 2 years. Considering the number of bug, feature and speed releases produced by Informix over the last four years this doesn't seem too unreasonable. Now in this case the upgrade charge for the products is 36% - just in the bottom half of Greg's range. Plus for this you get Tech Support thrown in free! Many companies may do bug fix release upgrades even more often so the deal gets cheaper. From this it can be seen that the deal is a trade off if you are going to upgrade less often say every 3 years it will cost you 54% (Just over the percentage for Oracle upgrades according to Greg). I'm not trying to say that a fee for straight upgrades is a bad idea. It would probably be good for some people. But to me the maintenance deal doesn't seem that bad considering the above. Cheers - Jim <*Standard Disclaimers, Opinions are my own, etc, etc *> -------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: Jim Gordon Internet: jgordon@ssf-sys.DHL.COM Company: DHL Systems Inc Phone: (415) 358-5911 (Work) Address: 1700 S. Amphlett Blvd. (415) 882-9728 (Home) San Mateo, CA 94402 Fax: (415) 571-6429 --------------------------------------------------------------------