Re: Ada vendors and the art of selling used cars

[those who know me have no need of my name <not-a-real-address@usa.net>]

<3b8194f3_2@news3.prserv.net> divulged:

>I DON'T want sales rep to teach me software engineering and son't want him
>telling me what is good for me. I am mature enough, and he has NO CLUE.

indeed, yet sales people are still sales people, and they put food on their
tables by selling products.  some companies certainly have seen (or believe
they have seen) a failure to capture market share due to price availability.

i'm with you, publishing the price of a quality ada suite should not scare
off anyone with a serious project, due solely to the number.  now if the
price is outside the budget, even including future projects, then no matter
how much chatter the sales person uses at the end of the day they'll have
lost the sale.

>However, when I am starting a project and I am considering a new tool, I want
>just a rough estimate what will be the cost. I don't want to call sales rep,
>waste his time, create expectations, and have him calling me every 3 days
>during next 6 month. 

not all sales reps are this way.  i would certainly hope that those
companies which don't publish their prices would have a policy against such
behavior.

>I can buy any other tool just visiting web page and
>giving them my credit card number. I don't see any reason why Ada
>must be an exception.

this isn't entirely true.  surely there are a great number of things that a
person can purchase these days via a web page, but there remain quite a
number that cannot.

i can't say that i really understand the kind of rationale that was just
posted by aonix, but then i don't need to understand why they do it.  they
do it, it's their right to do it that way if they like.

>Ach... By the way, Ada vendors, it happens that some projects are REALLY
>small and we have just 1 (yes, one) Ada developer. In such a case we are
>not ready to accept the reality that "the minimum number of seats is 5".
>We just walk away.... and stay with Java...

the ada market share is fairly small.  if these companies want to stay in
business they have to decide how much money they need to get in order to
staff their phones, and phones tend to ring mostly as a function of the
number of sites licensed rather than the number of seats/programmers
involved.  the cost of providing support to 1 site w/20 seats is different
than 20 sites w/1 seat.  to consider it they'd have to raise the price,
perhaps dramatically, for single seat/programmer licenses, and it's likely
(due to market share) that the price is already fairly substantial.  (it is
in all the quotes i've seen.)

-- 
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