Re: Ada vendors and the art of selling used cars

["Marc A. Criley" <mcqada@earthlink.net>]

Andrzej Lewandowski wrote:
> 
> Ada vendors,
> 
> Could you please publish price list of your products?
> 
> With notable exception of R.R. Software that makes the price list public,
> any attempt to know the cost of tools from other vendors results in "you
> will be contacted by our sales representative". The very first attempt of
> such sales representative is investigating the depth of my pocket. Usual
> question is "what for you will be using our product?" that generates my
> standard answer: "not your f...g business".

My past experience with two of the major vendors has been:

Rational Apex:  Around '96-97, it was several thousand (US $) per Unix
seat.  I do not know what their current pricing structure is for Unix or
Windows.  Maintenance then was 15% of the licensing fees per year.

ACT GNAT:  ACT does not sell seat licenses of course, they sell support
contracts.  The last price I recall, from 1999, was $12,000 to support
10 developers--which is actually quite competitive with other language
development environments for the high level of service provided.  And on
a project that had at least ten active developers, I wouldn't hesitate
to have an ACT support contract, it'd be stupid not to.  Threads here in
the past have questioned ACT's refusal to market to single developers or
very small shops--the short answer is, it's not the market they're
after.  So don't ask :-)

And to the Ada vendors:  Yes, this is dated information, it's overly
simplistic, it doesn't take into account the specific needs of the
customer or the services provided by the vendor, etc.  I know, the
intent here is just to provide some ballpark figures, you're welcome to
update them.

Marc A. Criley