On 8/16/2010 2:41 PM, Charles Mills wrote:
Anyone who thinks that owning a software company is a license to print money: you're free to start one of your own. Ask Dave Salt or any of the other software entrepreneurs who hang out here just how obscene their profits are.
It seems to come down to motivation. Small companies have lower overhead, and frequently the owner(s) are more interested in helping out that making money. Large companies are stuck with investors who want to see their stock prices and dividends increase very three months
Everyone rails against capacity pricing, but what's the alternative? When I started selling Outbound in 1988 my first plan was to charge everyone $24,000 no matter how big their processor was. Didn't work. We priced ourselves out of the market for the smaller shops, and left ourselves without the resources to compete with the $100,000 products at the bigger shops. Yes, the best thing would be pricing on a "business" metric (transactions, basically) rather that a "computer" metric (MIPS, etc.) but IBM has not made it easy to do that.
To me higher prices make sense only if you actually get more for your money - more and better results, better support, etc. So fees based on actual usage, with credit for spoiled runs, might make sense. Per seat or machine capacity does not reflect the value to the buyer; my cars costs the same whether I drive alone or carry five passengers. If I need more, I step up to a minivan or commercial bus, but in no case would the dealer double the price to sell the same vehicle to a larger company.
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, VT ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
