LiveCycle is a product that is an enterprise product. It's purpose is to take the programmatic aspects of PDFs (amongst other things) and incorporate business rules, work flow, design and automate many of the day-to-day business functions.
To make a sale to (say) a medium size organisation requires quite a lot of understanding of their business processes and rules, (there's some expertise required there - work study, knowledge of accounting procedures and audit trails etc), then the ticket price of a sale is typically far more than an average web site (whatever that is) - sales of $200,000 or more would be normal for LiveCycle and that requires knowlege of how to sell major deals - not quite a 'send-them-a-quote-and-see-if-they-accept" process. Then once the sale is made, there's quite a lot of work implementing LiveCycle in the customer organisation. It requires support people, programming people, designers, etc. It cuts no ice with Adobe that I might actually have all those skills from 25 years in the business forms business, consultancy work, major accounts and government accounts sales, managemnent of corporate state organisations and running an export business. They still wont entertain my having anything to do with LiveCycle (except as a customer) unless i work through the two companies that have it all stitched up. I rather get the idea that Adobe dont quite know how to market LiveCycle yet. For that reason they can't see that there are other people who have been around that business since the 1980s. Australia has been at teh forefront of electronic forms for decades - far ahead of technology in the USA, but its' no use telling Americans that Australians might be in advance of them. Substantial parts of LiveCycle's antecedents were developed right here in Sydney during the 1980s and 1990s. For an example of Adobe's approach to LiveCycle: (I'm paraphrasing a half-hour conversation here): Me: "...so can i see a demo copy or a eval copy or some kind of documentation so i can bring myself up to date with what's new in the product since i last worked with its predecessors?" Adobe: "well no not really. Unless you are going to work with <x company> or <y company> we wont be able to do anything ot help you." Me: "but that would mean introducing my clients to my competitors - giving them the names, details of the tasks everything to a substantial part of the deal - all the after-sales stuff and quite a bit of the pre-sales stuff too" Adobe: "thats how it is. Take it or leave it." So i decided that even though I konw how to sell that product, I know how it works and where the opportunities are, there's no point in busting my guts to make a deal only to have a competitor go in to my client and take the business away. (I know the individuals concerned and that's what they would do.) So .. as i said. by all means look at it from the point of view of a user/customer/client but if you think a $200,000 sale with another $200,000 or more in on-going services revenue is a good business proposition - forget it. they arent going to let you do it. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "cfaussie" group. To post to this group, send email to cfaussie@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cfaussie?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
