Re: PRESS: Informix in the News -- 11/25/96

grimes@access2.digex.net (Seth Grimes) wrote: :tanya@pls.com (Tanya Zimmerli ) writes: :>The pricing isn't tiered? I don't have alot of experience with :>Informix OnLine, but I know that the Illustra Server was tiered :>according to the number of seats and I had thought that the IUS would :>follow the same strategy. :>Has Informix issued a price list for IUS yet? :Hi Tanya. Informix is struggling big-time with pricing questions for :the market I know, which is the Internet, a market that will drive a :large chunk of near-future sales. Initial prices are similar to :Illustra prices but new prices are supposed to be coming very soon, like :January 1. I've been pushing lately in discussions with Informix staff :-- my employer is a VAR and has sold and has good prospects for continuing :to sell Informix licenses to lots of big-name clients -- for what might :be called "value-based" pricing. By this I mean a modification of the :current by-seat/by-processor melange to reflect the value the DB provides :to an organization. Usually but not always this value is proportionate :to hardware spending. Seth, what do you mean by "value-based" more concretly? If it's based on hardware spending it may be ok if you set up a computer with the Informix database as the only (or at least the major) application. In other cases the Informix products may be a small part of a large installation and it would be hard to see how hardware spending could be used as a basis for the Informix price. For client/server (or terminal based) applications the by-seat priceing is fine. It's understandable to the customer and hardware can be selected and later upgraded without problems. It should of course be by seat, that is by actual human user, not by login or session. For the Internet market by-seat obviously doesn't work very well. Your suggestion of hardware spending based may work, but then in the form of going back to a machine class based pricing. Or do you suggest a percentage of the hardware price? Hard to conceive of, and explain to someone. Some that sell tools to ISV's are trying to charge a percentage of the price of the final software product. This does not work. In an extreme case I would use 10 different tools, each charging 10% of my price to the end user.... Whatever the pricing model it must be simple, predictable and both understandable and acceptable to the final customers. It may be different for a customer buying a database as such (may be to set up their own web site) and someone buying it essentially as a part of an application (i.e. SAP or others). Of corse there will be overlapps between these groups creating problems if they where differentiated pricewise. The key issue still is that Informix need not only increased total dollar income, but probably more important a much larger market penetration counted by the number of users/customers. There need be no significant conflict between these. Nils.Myklebust@idg.no NM Data AS, P.O.Box 9090 Gronland, N-0133 Oslo, Norway My opinions are those of my company The Informix FAQ is at http://www.iiug.org