What iSeries software market? (was: More anti-midrange propaganda)

["Buck" <buck.calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Joe, I agree with your sentiment completely.  Unfortunately,
> > iSeries shops have a history of being... thrifty.

> I don't know about that.  SSA made a ton of
> money selling BPCS, and so did a number of
> other companies.  Why did they manage?

Beats me.  Certainly there are a handful of vendors who did OK, but there
are many more who struggle.  The tools vendors in particular seem to have it
the worst.  How many people balk at buying Hawkeye in favour of DSPPGMREF?
Bob Cozzi finally decided to _give away_ his Code Studio editor due to lack
of sales.  Maybe the application software vendors have it better, but there
are really only a handful: SSA, Mapics, JDE.  None of the companies I've
worked for ever bought packaged software, so I can't honestly name any
others...  Niche software (like us) just doesn't have enough unit sales to
make money on license fees, and it's really hard to get customers to see the
value-add in our services because they think of our package as being
turnkey - 'install it and leave us alone.'

If you work out how a small vendor can make money in this market, I'll be
the first one to send you a postcard from myself in Schenectady NY to you in
Tahiti.
  --buck