re:rumor

>Rumor of a Proposed Informix Support Policy Change > >Beginning soon, Informix will enact the following policy (this >information is second hand but fairly accurate): >1. For major upgrades, the client will have to pay 25% of the >list price of the software. In order to receive the upgrades at >25% of the list price, the client has to be under the 18% >maintenance agreement. > >2. For enhancements or minor upgrades (i.e. 4.0 to 4.1), the >client will have to pay a minimum of $299. Again, the client must >be under the 18% maintenance agreement. > >3. For error fix updates, the client will receive these free as >long as the client is under the 18% maintenance agreement. > >The Problems: >1. Based on the fact that major upgrades occur every 12 to 16 >months, the cost to you and your client will be in the >neighborhood of 43% of the list price of Informix per year. This >is unacceptable. > >2. Current Informix support is not adequate enough to support an >18% per year charge. Now they want 43%. > >3. Well over 75% of the Informix clients that pay the maintenance >fee, pay it because they want the upgrades only. If your clients >have a problem with FourGen which is really an Informix problem, >they cal you, not Informix. > >If this rumor is true, we as Informix users need to speak >up and find out what is going on. > > >root%indcon@wybbs.mi.org > > If the above is true, Bill, I want to lend my voice in agreement with the dissenters. We are currently not on support because we are a school department, with a limited budget, and haven't been able to muster the manpower to convert our programs from 3.3 to SQL. If the above policies are put into place, we never will convert. It will simply be more cost effective to convert to some other database. Besides, frankly, Informix support has, in my experience, been nothing to write home about, anyway. Your people seem to understand the code, alright, but not how to use the database well, or how to accomplish specific tasks. IMHO, the above policies will work against Informix, by encouraging people to stay with old versions. Some hardware vendors have seen their support problems mushroom when they started charging a lot of money to upgrade O.S.s. I worked for NCR when this happened. It can be a nightmare for a company to try to keep support people trained on years-old versions of software because customers refuse to pay the cost of expensive upgrades, but still want support. I sincerely hope that Informix will start listening to their customers. ------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Hart aubsch!jimh@bates.bates.edu Dept. of Education Phone: 207-784-6431 P.O. Box 800, 23 High St. Auburn, ME 04210 "Happiness is a state of mind." USA