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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Subject: Re: GNAT Support Costs
Date: 2000/02/05
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In article
<86k8kqowac.fsf@ppp-108-200.villette.club-internet.fr>,
  Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org> wrote:
> "Rob Kirkbride" <rob@rk-comp.demon.co.uk> writes:
> > I'm afraid I still believe that ACT have priced themselves
> > out of a certain slice of the market, but I'm no business
> > man and its not my company.
>
> Certainly a reasonable opinion.

It is not at all ACT's intention to cover 100% of the needs
of the Ada market. We specialize in a particular segment of
the market, namely large scale users who want to use GNAT,
and need high level support. We concentrate on being good
at that, and the company is being successful in this
specialization. So it is not that we have priced ourselves
out of a certain slice of the market, it is simply that our
business plan never included servicing that slice of the
market. We have left the business of selling low cost Ada
products to other companies, e.g. Aonix, who sells an
inexpensive version of Ada 95 for Windows.

It is a healthy and natural consequence of a lively market
that not all companies try to cover all possible product
needs. There is room for both Rolls Royce and Volkswagen
in the marketplace, people do not complain that Rolls Royce
has priced themselves out of the economy market.

High level support from top level technical engineers (as I
think most of you know, we have no separate support staff at
ACT, all our senior engineers have support as their primary
priority), is an expensive proposition. Not everyone needs it.
For those who *do* need it, many find the ACT support programs
for GNAT to be a bargain. It does not take much time saving
for a project team to easily pay for a support contract!

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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