Re: Vendor package pricing

On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 2:36 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Since the original post and replies that follow are rants against vendors
from people who opine from the perspective of being inside a company IT
department, have you ever considered the perspective from the other side of
the fence - from being a vendor yourself or working for one? Would your
opinion shift if you were to move from a position within an IT department
to one in a vendor shop?

I actually have considered the perspective from the other side of the
fence; and I honestly do not believe my opinion would shift if I moved
to a vendor shop. (And I think most if not all of the other
respondents could say the same.)

The question of open and available pricing may be clear for
consumer-oriented shrink-wrapped products of limited scope, but less clear
for products and services that require negotiation.

Perhaps less clear, but it still ought to be clear enough that the
vendor could at least post some realistic, good-faith example of what
a prospective customer could expect. For example, they could say
something like "while prices are negotiable, a typical small-to-medium
business of up to 500 users on such-and-such level of machine usually
pays between $3000 and $5000 for our product, with one year
maintenance included and X% annually after that".

Maybe the question is not whether you have a consumer perspective
versus a vendor perspective, but whether you are small potatoes or
enterprise level. Because both buying and selling when you have the
resources to throw around a million dollars "give or take a few
hundred thousand" is very different than when a few hundred thousand
is the difference between a banner year and bankruptcy.

John Y.