Re: GNAT Support Costs

["Marin D. Condic" <mcondic-nospam@quadruscorp.com>]

Geoff Bull wrote:
> 
> Robert Kirkbride wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone have any recommendations of cheaper compilers that cater for
> > small projects?
> 
> Um, the public version of Gnat?
> Then you can sign up for support when it suddenly
> looks like a cheap option.
> 
At the risk of trying to tell someone else how to run their
business....:-)

It would seem to me that it might pay to "segment the market" here.
There are tiers of customers with varying levels of support needed. Some
might simply need questions answered and advice on how to use the
product to achieve their objectives. (I've fallen into this category
many times!) Others might need that sort of technical support plus new
releases as soon as they are available. Still others might need all of
that plus bug fixes & enhancements on demand. Also, some projects are
very small (one person) while others could be quite large and long
lived. Structuring support contracts to try to capture each of those
segments makes business sense.

I know I have been in a position when using GNAT where I've simply
needed someone knowledgable about the compiler to talk me through
methods of obtaining the results I want. However, most of these were
one-man operations, some just IR&D efforts to prove out concepts. While
I wanted support, ACT seemed to be at a price point which I might have
been able to justify to the bean counters for a full-up engine control
project, but could never squeeze out the signatures needed for the
little hacker jobs I was doing.

Helpful Household Hint for Ada developers: I could easily get my boss to
sign almost any purchase order under $1500 because that was the level he
was authorized to spend without any review up the pipe. Over that amount
and I'd get told "no" simply because he didn't want to go through the
hassle for stuff that I just wanted and had no "project won't work
unless..." justification lined up. (The project had better have been
pretty important too. Couldn't just be a sideline job.) So it would pay
to find out what that price point is for many larger potential customers
and structure products & services to be under that point. Its easier to
sell individual bite sized pieces than it is to sell the whole lump.

MDC
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