Re: Input/Discussion for ISVs (was Innovis EDI software) -- MIDRANGE-L

As usual people are voting with their feet. Any vendor that considers their customers a cash machine to be plundered at will without adding value are doomed to go out of business. IBM at times has been the worst offender in this area never adding features to product to keep existing customers, only to add new customers. Packages and product stagnated while other newer systems became the "hot" software / hardware of the day.

IBM now has made a decent effort to reduce the cost of moving to a new box, but there is still arbitrary pricing all over the place. Twinax is a premium, PSF/400 is a premium and so on. Difficult migration paths and difficult to configure new systems make the Windows / Linux choice a simple one.

Bottom line, same number of users, same activity, same transactions should result in no cost to migrate. Make your revenue through exceptional support and new features / applications.

"Lukas Beeler" <lukas.beeler-2ujrB9ubhUvTUZxi/5/Jug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:<3caa6a0f0806032319j176d77afk6698f20d4f2e0cc4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>...

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 11:46 PM, Thompson, Steve
<Steve_Thompson-dZrEwY9FnX1Wk0Htik3J/w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

As a software vendor, you develop a product(s). To support that
product(s), and meet contractual obligations, there must be phone
support from 8a-9p per some time zone (or whatever, you get the point).

Yep, and there are basically two categories of software on the IBM i world:

* Software that is still being actively sold to a considerable number
of "new accounts"

This mostly involves software that is useful for people that already
have an IBM i. Mostly the the tools software can profit here.

* Software that is no longer able to sell well to new accounts

This mostly involves software that would require new customers to buy
an IBM POWER machine running IBM i. A great example for this category
would be an ERP package.

For a software company in the latter part of the game, you'll need a
strategy to survive. No matter how good your software package is, if
there are no (or an extremely low influx of) new customers, the
customers migrating away for whatever reasons will slowly kill you.
For example, you can port your software to another platform with more
potential buyers and then offer your IBM i customers to migrate -
which might not be welcome to some customers. So the alternative is
just to get whatever money you can out of them. This behaviour seems
to many shops that once had an IBM i package and now have moved on to
other platforms. It makes perfect sense to me, and i don't see any use
complaining about this.

Luckily, my employer is still able to get a few new customers here and
there, but it's not easy. The choice is never Windows or IBM i - the
choice is always Windows or Windows and IBM i, making it very hard to
persuade customers that the additional cost will help him in the long
run.

Add to that that several AS/400 users are still stuck in their AS/400
mindset. Twinax, Matrix printers, etc. Luckily, IBM has finally killed
of Twinax in our market segment. Our sales are panicking about that,
but i'm very happy about it. Sometimes you just have to force people
to their luck.

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