Re: Informix Engine Pricing - 30+% Increase for 1997??

Greg wrote: > > I just had an interesting tidbit come up (quite by accident...) in > conversation with my salesrep... > > There used to be (until this year) 3 options for licensing the engine: > > 1. Openline - Most expensive option - includes upgrades, development > activity and phone support. > 2. Assurance - Medium cost per user option - same as openline, no phone > support. > 3. Runtime - lowest cost per user option - upgrades only, no development > activity allowed, no phone support. > > He says #3 is no longer available. #2 is the best I can do for my > runtime users. > > The net effect is about a 30-35% cost increase (on annual maintenance). > These are not trivial bucks. > > Anybody else notice this yet??? > > Greg My local distributor received a new Price Book not too long ago and there was no mention of removal of Assurance-Runtime. As far as we're concerned, there exists 3 classes of maintenance: - OpenLine -- for development licences; got everything. - Assurance-Development -- for development licences; OpenLine w/o the phone support. - Assurance-Runtime -- for runtime licences; same as always. If you confirm your information please let us know. I have no facts before me to support your source's report. IMHO, the change in price structure that was undertaken abt 2-3 years ago, i.e. the change to User-based Pricing, made Informix out of the affordability range for small business. Now, I see that they have removed the runtime licences for the engines for versions 7.x and upwards. For countries whose currency is not as strong as the USD, that hurt a bit (although for a long time we suspected that the only difference between development and runtime engines were the provision of manuals for the former and not the latter). So, the overall net effect is that Informix prices have gotten higher. To charge more for runtime maintenance (or remove it as an option) would be consistent with their current trend, but detrimental to an increasing number of smaller sites. I hope, for their sakes, it isn't so. Best regards, Nigel -- +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Name : Edmund Nigel Gall Address: 9A Stanmore Avenue | | Title : Account Executive Port of Spain | | Company : Stratis Caribbean Ltd. Trinidad & Tobago, W.I. | | | | Contact Information: | | Office Personal | | Voice : (809) 623 6530/1 (809) 662 6611 | | Fax : (809) 623 8370 (809) 662 6611 | | Email : ngall@stratis-caribbean.com nigelg@trinidad.net | +----------------- http://www.stratis-caribbean.com -----------------+