Re: Tech Support

In article <1992Apr29.000948.331@psd.uucp> gardner@psd.UUCP (Gardner Pomper) writes: >Your figures are a bit out of date. Informix has just changed their >upgrade policies. You still need to purchase maintenance, at about >20% of the purchase price per year, but now you don't get free >upgrades. That 20% per year gives you the privilege of paying 25% >for new versions. (Remember, this is on top of a 50% penalty for >buying maintenance after it has expired). Plus, the major releases >that Informix is planning for this year are *not* considered >upgrades, they are considered to be new products, and not eligible >for these low-cost upgrades. > >I admit these policies are really hard to believe, but before >everyone says that I am making this up, let me state that I have >spoken to my sales rep, her boss, the local Informix tech rep and the >head of Informix customer support trying to get a more reasonable >solution to my upgrade problem. Hmm. If you are saying that all of these people confirmed the above upgrading policy, then either they or I are *seriously* misinformed. The following is MY UNDERSTANDING of the policy. I checked with someone who is "in the know" but not a company officer, so I can't guarantee any of it... but I'd be interested to hear of people being told otherwise. Also, keep in mind that the policy I'm referring to is in the Americas: Europe and Asia/Pacific probably differ a little. Let's review Gardner's comments one-at-a-time: >Your figures are a bit out of date. Informix has just changed their First of all: nothing's changed yet; there's a *proposed* new policy that isn't final... and it doesn't resemble these comments much. >upgrade policies. You still need to purchase maintenance, at about >20% of the purchase price per year, but now you don't get free upgrades. Slightly true. Major version upgrades (e.g. X.10.03 to 4.X, 4.X to 5.X) will be charged for, but even then the upgrade charge is less than the 25% he's quoting. Maintenance releases (e.g. 4.0 to 4.1) and bugfix releases (e.g. 4.10.UC1 to 4.10.UD1) are FREE to maintenance holders and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. Also, as I understand it, engines/embeddeds upgrades from 4.X to 5.0 aren't even being charged for (assuming maintenance). Has anybody out there upgraded and can verify what they were charged? >That 20% per year gives you the privilege of paying 25% >for new versions. (Remember, this is on top of a 50% penalty for >buying maintenance after it has expired). The new policy will probably increase this to 100%. Meaning, if you buy maintenance within 90 days of product purchase and keep renewing it, you pay basic maintenance rate. If you try to buy it later or you let it lapse and try to start maintenance again just to get an upgrade, you pay double maintenance for the first year back. However, you still get the same upgrade pricing (free, or X% if a major-version upgrade), so it's still much cheaper than buying a whole new version (even at the 50% of list that Mr. Hogg was begging for). > Plus, the major releases >that Informix is planning for this year are *not* considered >upgrades, they are considered to be new products, and not eligible >for these low-cost upgrades. Not knowing what "upgrades" he's talking about, I can't really say. If it's a new product, it's not an upgrade, is it? For some historical context, look at Turbo-OnLine. OnLine was a new product, but I don't think any Turbo maintenance holders were charged for the OnLine upgrade... >This calculation does work out nicely when Informix does come out >with major upgrades on a regular basis. This is not necessarily the >case. I purchased the MS-DOS version of Informix when it first came >about 5(?) years ago. I think that there has been one minor update >since then. Wrong. First DOS products were (I think) ISQL 1.10 and ESQL/C 1.10. Since then, there have been 2.00.00B-D, 2.10.06B-E, and just recently, 4.10. 4GL is the only product that hasn't had updates recently, and that's more like 2.5 years, I think. > | Gardner Pomper Pomper Software Design, Inc | -- Alan Denney # aland@informix.com # {pyramid|uunet}!infmx!aland Disclaimer: These opinions are mine alone. If I am caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of my actions. "Binary applications built on SCO UNIX System V will run on any computer based on the Intel 386 or 486 instruction sets." - SCO UNIX v4.0 Release Notes Cool! Now I can run grep on my DOS machine!