Pilgrim's progress at the medicine show

Pilgrim's Progress or Why do I need New Era - Part II by Tim Schaefer Sometimes I leap before I look. Has this ever happened to you? It's probably the same feeling you get when you spill your drink at a formal dinner. Fort- unately for me I haven't spilled my drink at a dinner, but occasionally I do leap before I look. This is a minimal occurance too, and I haven't experienced it in street traffic yet. Only here in this newsgroup does it seem to happen more often than not. :-) I bring up the above topic because while most of my premature experiences have made me feel silly, the out of pocket cost has been relatively low. Oh sure, my face turns flush, but no real physical or financial harm. This discussion about New Era has basically had these thoughts in mind. Currently I've had to get involved in risk assessment for my own business, and a couple of my customers. It basically boils down to the "Ben Franklin" close salesmen use to help folks make decisions about buying products. In one column you put the benefits of product A, and in another column you put the benefits of product B, and so forth. We know as system analysts and programmers that many projects in 4GL--even the small ones can easily turn from 3-month projects into 6-month projects. This happens with other products as well. If you stay at the project level of risk assessment, your world seems uneventful. But step back to the business level, and look at your projects, and some interesting things start to take place. At the business level you're suddenly looking at the facility management of MIS. Hardware. Software. Long term. Short term. Where are we headed? How much will we need to spend? How much are we spending? Oh--and the users, what are <they> interested in? How are the current applications serving <them>? Then we get the next step out and we get to the market place, where we look for future products to improve our world. As a business person looking at these areas of business, ( the projects, the business of running a business, and the market place ) I have to find the best solutions that are not going to end up costing me MORE money in the long term. And my customers want the same thing. It's hard for any business to call software an investment. If you can't call it an investment, how can you get a return on it? There are software products that are investments, because they will bring a return to the company a profit instead of a loss. They have a value that allows a business to profit from the use of that software. Time is an important factor in making profits too. Where does New Era fit into business? Does it have investment potential? By the time I ramp up and learn how to use it to make a profit, will there be a better product available at an even lower cost? And what about the accellerated pace of software revisions? A NEW New Era is going to be on the market just about the time I get the current one--how much is it going to cost me? And how much is it going to cost to deploy these applications? If you work at INFORMIX, ask yourself this question: If I had to PAY for New Era just like everyone else, would I buy it? How much would YOU pay for it if you had to price it AND pay for it? I'll help you out with the pricing. Combine NewEra, SE, Viewpoint, and any other software necessary to get a developer up and running into one package. This includes the ODBC drivers and any other network boondoggles you need to make it work. Eliminate the need to pay runtime licensing for executables deployed on any computer. Sell this package for US $495.00/user. I'll send you a check immediately based on what I've seen in the video tape and the Viewpoint demo disk. I know it's a good product. But it does not operate in a vacuum. It has to take it's place along side all the other software products my business uses to MAKE money and minimize my risk in the market place. INFORMIX heads know there will be this reaction to the pricing of their new product. They're playing a dangerous game, waiting for the squeals and outrage to die down, and post listings of companies who've made the plunge to the promised land. In my part of the country you can buy a boat and head for open seas. But if you don't buy the right kind of boat you might be in trouble. A little research can help you go a long way--over the water, or under it. I installed Windows NT Workstation this week. In order to get into VC++ you will need to get Win NT. It will not only be essential, it will change your perspective. You will start asking some of the same questions I am. BTW, the NT Resource Kit can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com for FREE even though they tell you in the NT docs it's $149.00. There's a FAQ too, at http://www.mcs.com/~thomas/www/ntfaq/ . ( BTW, Win NT is fantastic! It's a definite UNIX killer. ) I'm making the committment to client/server with or without INFORMIX. Experience is helping me avoid spilling my drinks or spending money foolishly. I still will probably leap into this newsgroup sometimes without looking. But like television, you don't have to read it. And now that I've got NT, would someone please tell me what I need UNIX for? Phil White, if you're reading this, we won't hold it against you if you lower the price. You'll be considered a genius every bit as much as Bill Gates. Fire the whole marketing department and blame it on THEM. The squeals may die down here, and big companies that can afford the current pricing will probably buy your New Era. But you will NEVER get the market share you really need to succeed. As a diehard INFORMIX booster I want to see you succeed, because that will help me succeed. You have Dynamic Scalable Architecture, why not Dynamic Scalable Pricing? Look at the Trojan Horse marketing strategy of Microsoft and you can't go wrong. \\\\|// (o o) ==============================---o00--(_)--00o---============================ Tim Schaefer tschaefe@gate.net The Computer Business Company, Inc. http://www.gate.net/~tschaefe Coconut Creek, FL, USA INX_UTIL Tool Kit is now shareware Ub...eh...Now, see, who gets to ask the questions here? --Ross Perot =============================================================================