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Corporate America Wary of Subscription Software
medical_geek writes: "According to this
article
on cio.com,
MS's subscription service is failing in the business world. I guess
that personal users are not the only group that balks at paying a yearly
fee for software. My question is have you at your job bit the bullet
and signed up as an early adopter, or are you rolling the dice and seeing
if this experiment fails?" This article focuses only on Microsoft, but the same analysis probably explains why ASPs haven't taken off like they were supposed to, either.
We have the same problems in going out to market. We face customers that want to control their own destiny and not completely give up control of their core business.
I believe that unless the technology is a complete commodity , no company is going to be excited about signing up for something thats subscription and reley their business on it.
It'll only be when the quality of the software is up to scratch that people will start thinking about its price. In the end, the total cost of ownership of software is much larger than the licence fee: putting in fixes after deployment is terribly expensive.
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
My company is about to do a rollout to a company of about 50 users. We are telling them to go for Win2k rather than XP, purely because of all the driver problems we are having on our test systems.
They want a fast rollout, with minimum hassles.
Windows XP cant offer that right now.
That is, if you subscribe to these upgrades, you kind of feel you will have to upgrade when something new comes along, even though you do not have to. That takes time, especially in larger offices/companies/megacorporations. Time often much better spent on actually getting some work done. Hehe. No, I don't speak of necessary patches and such - although that is a huge cost (in time) when dealing with MS products too.
So there is no reason at all to subscribe for the newest software, I would upgrade when I must (or when it pays off in better efficiency). I really understand why these big customers don't want to have their IT administrators get their timetable from another company (MS).
And I really understand those that see a bit further and refuse simply because they don't want to be (even more) locked in.
I won't buy into a software subscription service for my software for a few reasons:
1.) I can use a given software packages for years at a time...for me, SecureCRT comes to mind, though my license won't support any of the downloadable versions.
2.) The overall cost of subscription is higher. My company's official office software suite is STILL Office 97. Not that there's anything wrong with 2k or XP, but 97 gets the job done...and it's already paid for.
3.) But the big thing is what happens when a product becomes unsupported? Does the program up and quit and force an upgrade, possibly bring a screeching halt to whatever business process you working on at the time? Does the program send off a little message so the marketing drones relentlessly pound on my phone line, reminding me to renew? Are all my data files locked out?
Even though the initial cost is higher, I much prefer to just buy my software. Unfortunately, subscription is pretty much here...it's in every program that requires an Internet connection to "activate" their products. It's not confined to Microsoft Office anymore...it's just a "lifetime" subscription thing to start getting us used to the idea.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Just remember, when you are subscribing to a service, rather than purchasing an upgrade, you have a lot less leverage as a buyer to control your costs. The CIOs, mostly managers of 'corporate cost centers', obviously recognized that.
Second, the technological rate of progress for a service provider will always be slower because its so much easier for the vendor to retain its existing revenue base than to take the risks of developing new products. For example, I predict that the more you see Microsoft switching to a subscription-based software business model, the less focus you'll see on features (needed to get new business) and the more focus you'll see on risk-averse issues (like security and availability) to insure nothing rocks the revenue boat. Oh wait, Microsoft just announced that, didn't they?
--LP
Stability: it's better than the WIN3.11 that a lot of users have now
Software Price: it's a LOT cheaper than what MS is charging for WIN ME etc. Subscription in itself is not really a problem (we have a few mainframes and IBM's software is mostly subscription based, but that usually includes upgrades and consultancy).
Total cost of ownership: It can be run on 'slower' hardware than what's needed for the newer flavors of WIN. It's also upgraded less frequently (upgrading 1500 PC's is a lot of work and therefor expensive).
PS: We also checked out Linux. The (sadly enough) only reason not to go for that was the (at that time) lack of support for MS-fileformats.
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
Trust:
8. A combination of firms or corporations for the purpose of reducing competition (c.f. *) and controlling prices (c.f. **) throughout a business or an industry.
Surely someone here can help me resolve my confusion.
Ironically, the reason why CIOs feel empowered is that they probably have most of what they want out of their PCs; they're "good enough". Improvements post-Win2000 and older Office suites don't look that compelling. So why lock yourself into some unnecessary upgrade stream?
--LP
At the moment with the economy on a backstep Microsoft has chosen the wromg time to start the push to subscription based software. It does not need a PHD to work out that the fundamental reason for this is to increase the revenue stream from its users. (There is a nice analogy here with pushers and drug users here but i'll leave it for now)
However, there is a major bonus for the open source movement as commercial interests are now looking to reduce their exposure to MS. Consequently, Linux is gaining more credibility as an alterantive O/S within the mainstream business markets.
Frankly, I'm all for MS pushing the subscription based model as hard and as fast as possible but I don't own any MS stock and I do care about the open source movement.
Just a thought.. but Linux Just Makes Sense more and more now-a-days, even if in some cases, it is less capable than the Microsoft alternative.
My company is in no rush to adopt XP. At the current time we're sticking with NT4 (some 2000). The reason is quite simple (and two fold) - the overall cost over the 'product lifespan' is significantly more. If you buy a copy of NT, then you own a copy of NT (or site license). It will remain 'valid' for several years (5 or so) and is a one off cost. Even better is the fact that when we buy a new PC this is included as the Redmond tax and thus is an 'invisible' cost to the business.
(No I don't like this practice, but the company as a whole does)
The other reason is the difference between capital and ongoing running costs. If you are renewing an XP license each year, your _service_ cost increases per desktop. As an IT department, we don't care, but our users definitely do.
The 'capital expenditure' of buying a new workstation and a copy of an OS goes into a different 'budget bucket'. It makes it easier to explain as 'we need to buy a PC and a copy of windows' rather than 'We need to buy a PC, and then we need to pay for a license for it each year'.
I'm really hoping this master plan of microsoft is going to fail. IT is the same situation as ASP - software developers want to have a steady income, but end users and companies see it as a 'I pay x bucks for your product'.
As long as any software distributer is selling 'forever' licenses, few are going to opt in to an ongoing fee service (IMHO).
Big companies are reminding me more and more of great, stupid, predatory animals. They fish the seas dry, annihilate competition, and chew down more of their prey each time. There's no intelligence, no forethought, it's all one-way traffic, with consumers as food.
When a predator gains an overwhelming advantage in a natural system, they typically exhaust their entire food supply, which in turn triggers their own extinction. I suppose this is what comes from skipping those elective natural science classes to focus on your MBA.
Microsofts licensing charges are proportionally steeper than the software systems we have.
Also licensing, typically, gives you technical support and escalation facilities.
Will we be able to ring them when things break?
eBay is one of the most successful ASPs on the Internet. Sellers seem to have no problem paying a per-auction fee to eBay for hosting the auction application. You can imagine an alternative where everone paid $10 for an eBay application that sat on their Windows desktop and did a P2P search of current auctions by communicting Gnutella-style with the other eBay applications. It would suck. The ASP version kicks its ass any day of the week.
Similarlly, I used to work for a company with an ASP remote access application. To circumvent firewalls that only allow outbound connections, the company routes all connections through their servers; there's no other way to do it if you want to support connections where both endpoints are firewalled. Hence, ASP. It's easy for me to justify paying a monthly fee to use this service because the application demands it. I have to use their servers. (The company includes free support and free upgrades with the subscription fee, too, which makes it rather more attractive than Microsoft's licensing scheme.)
As for ASP MS Office... At this point, my reaction is, "What's the point?" In the absence of ubiquitous thin-client computing, I can't see at all why I'd want to pay for a subscription. There's no value in an ASP model for lots of applications, include most of Microsoft's (with obvious exceptions like Hotmail).
ASPs didn't fail. They just succeeded where it was logical for them to succeed.
You can't grow your market. If you can't grow your market, then how do you increase your revenues? The only way is to change your pricing structure. Since you are a monopoly everyone has to cough up (or at least that's what MS thought).
Unfortunately for MS it seems to be inducing people to look for alternative ways of reducing the money they pay. This is the time to do some evangalisation folks!
I was originally very sceptical of subscribing to software as a service. The tools I use every day (Dev Studio etc), I would like to buy on CD, install on my box, and keep.
I am starting to move towards the idea now. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to play around with some images in Photoshop. I had to find the CD, install it, use it for an hour or so, then uninstall it. It's not worth paying several hundreds dollars to do this, so most people won't bother. There are quite a few apps that I will want to use a couple of times a year, or once a month.
With a subscription based system my company could have an account with say, Adobe. When I need to use Photoshop, I go to the website, and use it as a service, and the company gets a bill at the end of the month. It's simple.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Good department. Certainly appropriate.
We're talking about a company here that wants to milk as much money out of its' customers, with the least effort required.
They're certainly working well toward that goal -- look where we are now!
- We have a 'server' OS that differs from the 'Ooo, SHINY!' home version by virtue of just a few registry settings!
- Microsoft will accept NO liability for its' software, neither for fitness for purpose, the accidental destruction of your company, or the surreptitious mailing of your anti-government rants to the FBI.
- Two words: Product Activation. Once upon a time, the MS Office license actually allowed you to install it on your home & work machines. Gee, Microsoft sure is a nice company! They're cute and cuddly, too! Now that everyone's used to it, all of a sudden we have to pay for every copy -- you can't tell me that wasn't a patiently engineered plan.
If Microsoft wants to make subscriptions attractive, offer something in return -- we already get all the benefits of WindowsUpdate, are they going to take that away? What is needed is a guarantee of fitness for use, stability, and timely repair of problems. And by timely, I mean 'timely from the customer's definition', not Microsoft's!(Why does a server need Media Player, DirectX, Active Desktop, and all the other home-version 'shell-upgrade' tweaks, anyway?!?)
If I go to Ford and buy a dump truck, I am guaranteed that it will haul N tons of material, or N cubic meters, whichever is less. If I bought a 10-ton truck, and the wheels fall off when I put a 5-ton payload in it, I can sue.
Apply this comparison to Microsoft: I purchase Windows 2000 Server, Exchange Server, and the recommended hardware to run it on, and when it fails at half the advertised max load, Microsoft will gladly bill me for a support incident to tell me I need better hardware! ...And there's nothing I can do about it.
I know this comparison isn't perfect, but it certainly makes the point. I know a lot of companies are sick and tired of buying something advertised as suiting a particular purpose, only to find it lacking.
If the subscription allows me to hold MS accountable, I'm interested. Otherwise, forget it.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
We have just removed a program that has been in service for some 30 years on our mainframes. It has been modified, upgraded and bug fixed in that time, but it has been in constantly in use over 3 decades.
We want a similarly stable service on our other systems, including desktops. Admittedly we don't necessarily want the same software lifetime. But given that we have some 50,000 or so desktops we don't want to be patching or upgrading the software on them very often. It takes a lot of effort to plan and install a new piece of software across all our desktops.
The guy claims, he's gonna be charged an extra $8 million for upgrading everyone to the new office?
Just think what sort of an OpenOffice you could buy for that money. That would pay 30 programmers for 2 years, and once that money was spent, you could have as many copies as you like.
At my place of business, we develop VB applications (no flames please) that we use internally to control inventory, and to track units that we produce, as well as write test software to well, test our product before it ships. Besides running windows 98/NT/2000, we've decided to start converting our software over to Linux, writing in pure C, and using MySQL for databases. OK, I know this seems OT so far, but my point here is that we are doing all of this to avoid using XP and any other upcoming versions of MS windows. We have decided that we will do our best to make sure that 2000 is the last version of windows that we will ever buy, at least in our department. We've already been using Linux on servers within our department for about a year, using apache to run a simple intranet server, and have samba up doing file and print services. Since some of the brass have found out about our 'secret' of having high availability linux servers, they were intrigued and like the direction we've taken thus far. Hopefully we can avoid XP all together, and write software that can potentially be useful forever, by writing it for an OSS platform.
------
Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
...I'm using a company machine with WinNT 4.0 SP6a. With a "Windows(R) 2000 Professional 1-2 CPU" sticker on the side. We downgraded it, and for a very good reason.
It does everything that I need to do my job. It does nothing that I don't need. The issues are known. It doesn't require any more patching because it ain't broke, or it's broke in known and acceptable ways. It doesn't require our IT guys to have to ask what version of what OS I'm running, nor to hunt out the right ghost image for that combination of hardware and OS. It can be ghost installed or copied, which is vital for replicating software builds.
Windows 2000 would be a barely acceptable substitute. There are far too many unknowns with WinXP, plus it has that habit of knowing better than you what drivers you really want to use (I need to test beta drivers, for god's sake, give me an "I know what I'm doing" button!).
Windows.NET would be absolutely, utterly unworkable in a business environment, because neither I, nor our IT guys would know what exactly was on the machine, nor would it be possible to replicate that at a later date to reproduce a build exactly.
We cannot and will not upgrade to .NET. Ever. As application support for NT dies away at the same time as Linux support grows, it's looking like a better (corporate!) proposition every day, and not just in the server room.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
A subscription model won't let you do this (without a heavily software modification by crackers).
My money is on the crackers winning. To my knowledge, very few games have _not_ been cracked in some measure. Those which are most resilient are those which require a login to a 'game server' (Diablo II battle net or Half life online). Even then, unless you want to play online, it's quite possible to get them going.
Which looks to be the way things are going I suppose, but it'll really suck to have to run a net connection _just_ to be able to use their application.
Now there's a thought. 'fake' authentication servers? Is that even possible?
Time will tell at a guess. My money though, is on people just sticking with the 'best' version of a product which doesn't require the upgrade.
I am not going to debate with anyone whether this is a major reason why DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.) failed... but I believe it was part of it. I worked for the US Gov't in the late 80's and we had a lot of VAXes running VMS. EVERY STINKING YEAR we had to pay money to upgrade our licenses.
This idea came and went, and I for one am personally very happy that Micro$oft has chosen such a moronic policy that has, in part, caused other companies to fail. Here's to your self-inflicted demise, Bill!!! "Have at it, and good luck!"
One of the biggest factors keeping companies from adopting the "software as a service" model has been, as you suggest, fear of outsourcing critical business functions to shaky ASP Internet startups. However, in the current economic environment, most "bad" ASPs have already gone away, or are hanging on by their fingertips -- no longer are you seeing people dumping Windows apps over the Internet using Terminal Server and crap like that. It is just not cost-effective.
Still, outsourced software provides real value in many cases, and companies want it dearly. For example, if you have any idea how expensive it is to pay IT staff simply to support MS Exchange for a medium to large-size company, the costs are huge. Several companies are currently making a living hosting Exchange, Oracle Financials, and other "hostable" commercial software packages because over time it is actually cheaper to pay someone else a flat monthly fee to manage it than to hire your own staff, especially if you are a large organization. Intermedia is one ISP I've seen that hosts Exchange, for example.
Many solid ASPs are also targeting more distributed types of organizations, one of which is Professional Services. Companies such as Portera provide collaboration tools such as online time sheets and expense sheets, as well as document sharing and versioning, all over the Internet through a browser.
For PS organizations or Contract Agencies distributed around the globe, a hosted application avoids the staggering infrastructure costs that go along with having a global company. Take into account maintaining your VPN gateways, so you can get to varied internal applications, which must also be maintained, plus licensing and support costs, plus hardware/network and you are talking big money. With a hosted app, you pay your flat fee, after which all you need is an internet connection and you're in.
As for big-money (but new) service-arena players like Microsoft, it seems obvious they are trying to leverage customers into an even tighter spot with this new licensing scheme, without providing real added value. This subscription thing doesn't seem to work very well with shipped products, since you are forcing people to "throw away" something tangible that they feel works fine, and upgrading desktop machines costs dollars not only in licensing but also in the whole loss of inertia in the company with the upgrade (and IT staff). However, as M$ moves more toward providing .NET services we will see them become more successful in selling subscriptions for web services and the like. That is, as long as they don't shoot themselves in the foot with Passport. ;)
--Micko
Even Eric S. Raymond agrees with MS on this one :
"It is also worth noting that the manufacturing delusion encourages price structures that are pathologically out of line with the actual breakdown of development costs. If (as is generally accepted) over 75% of a typical software project's life-cycle costs will be in maintenance and debugging and extensions, then the common price policy of charging a high fixed purchase price and relatively low or zero support fees is bound to lead to results that serve all parties poorly.
Consumers lose because, even though software is a service industry, the incentives in the factory model all cut against a vendor's offering competent service. If the vendor's money comes from selling bits, most effort will go to making bits and shoving them out the door; the help desk, not a profit center, will become a dumping ground for the least effective and get only enough resources to avoid actively alienating a critical number of customers." - Eric S. Raymond
This is taken from The Magic Cauldron
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I to use NT4 on some servers, just because they host websites and do that for a long time now and if it aint broke, don't fix it. However, Win2k brings new stuff to the plate, which you haven't touched according to your story. F.e. fully automated software installation/controll via AD using easy scripts. Windows.NET server will make this even easier. What you say about it wouldn't be workable is so far off the truth it hurts. Why? Because it has f.e. the checkpoint tech that's also in XP: you can roll back to any state you want: with the registry, with the drivers etc.
At ABN-AMRO, one of the worlds largest banks, they totally run on win2k and use an inhouse developed softwarecontrol/distribution system, based on AD and VBScript. Everything can be and is controlled from a central point in the WAN. Not workable? ha!. Perhaps you should kick your IT-guys in the butt so they finally get their head out of their asses and read the course material they received at the courses they attended to.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
I work for an ASP in the financial sector located outside of Philadelphia. I'd like to say for the record that not only are we surviving the dot-com crash, but we are doing quite well.
Even through the September 11th disaster and financial woes that followed, our firm thrived and actually had sales INCREASE during that time.
The trick to us being a successful ASP is that we have an extremely driven sales department, and a very adaptable product that can be modified to suit any user's needs. We fill a niche with industry knowledge and expertise that is quite valuable to our customers.
Please don't lump companies like mine in with Dr. Koop dot COM!
Many successful software companies charge support fees in addition to a flat fee for the software itself. Sometimes the support contract is mandatory to obtaining the software. This really amounts to the same thing as M$'s deal, but the way Microsoft does it has more of an unsavory feel, doesn't it?
Why is that? Conceptually, we know that any given piece of software is only going to last a few years (without an upgrade) before it becomes irrelevant. Wouldn't it be easier to just pay an annual fee and always get the latest and greatest without having to worry about it?
But, I guess it is the idea of personal choice, and the fact that it's cheaper only if you were going to get every single upgrade with no break in between.
Perhaps they should just return to sold software and support contracts.
I'm an IT Manager, and also opted not to take the Software Insurance offer. For one it meant that we'd have upgrade (or at least buy the licenses) all our MS products to latest version. All the NT + Exchange + SQL CALs, and then Windows + Office + Project... It adds up quickly.
... :-) But if you don't take software assurance then you can't just upgrade down the line. You have to pay the full purchase price. Which is all fine and dandy, except that they didn't write the product from scratch, they built it on top of older versions. And you already paid them for the intellectual property in the previous versions, so why do it again? Upgrade in the older, normal sense is much more fair, since you only pay them for the added value... when you need it.
But my main point that I wanted to make is that it's just plain unfair. Microsoft want you to pay them even when you *don't* want the latest and greatest. (And 95% can life without it... If some people think StarOffice 5.2 is good enough
Pardon the rant.
Because microsoft measures value based on increasing revenues each year, maximizing share holder value means shorten the product cycle from 2-4 years to 1 year. From a share holder perspective, it's great. A rapid product cycle is a good thing for share holders because it means you're getting more repeat business more frequently.
From a user perspective, a certain level of product stability is necessary to create a sense of value and reliability. If the product cycles at a faster rate the customer is comfortable with, the company begins to loose business. Think of a can opener. What if every can opener was only good for 10 uses and it would break. No one would buy can goods or can openers. Food manufacturers would use some other container, like a jar instead of cans. It doesn't matter if the can opener is only 2.00. No one wants to buy a new can opener every week.
Microsoft is not immuned to the same market principles. Making a product too good or really poor isn't good for the company, consumers or the economy. Back in the 80's Honda found a good way to make bearings in such a way that they would last 30-50 years. Well guess what. Honda stopped using them in cars because they were too good. Using those bearings in cars made them way too reliable and was hurting replacement parts sales. There has to be some middle ground where corporate and consumer needs are in balance.
Microsoft may or may not realize it before it is too late.
Oh, that's rich. I know, let's lie to our customers then tell them that their tech staff is incompetent! When a company says something, they should do it.
:)
Let's apply this elsewhere. If a company says you will, at a minimum, receive a 20% raise after 1 year of employment, and then gives you a 5% raise and no chance to negoiate, you'd be mad, no?
So how is when Microsoft says it's OS will do 20% of the job any other OS should on the same hardware, and then does 5% of that 20%, people aren't allowed to get mad?
Autodesk has been trying to do this this with AutoCAD for the past couple of years. The reason that it has met resistance there is the fact that every other realse has been a failure (Release 11, 13, 2000). I am worried that they will upgrade a good release with a bad one.
They say that they will have a way of backing out of the subscription upgrage. I just want to make my drawings they want a steady stream of money. Maybe I could pay them to leave AutoCAD alone.
i really dont understand how redhat forces people to pay for stuff. i download updates nightly from them to our file server. then i use apt4rpm to update the programs i choose on the workstations using a nightly script.
perhaps i'm missing something here.
-- john
My wife works for a large investment house. And they have not bought into this scheme. They are now thinking about deploying LINUX. This is done for two reasons:
1) Put Microsoft in its place
2) Test LINUX and see if it actually is usable.
I think now is a good time to show how good LINUX is. Corporations have the ear of the other software vendors.
Interesting that Microsoft always said they would never make the mistake that other corporations did when they got large. True they did not, but they are making their own mistake. It is not arrogance, but "Microsoft rightness". I bet this will make interesting business case in the future.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
We're jumping head-first into Microsoft products here, at a non-profit operation. Office XP alone will cost us several tens of thousands of dollars (US) per year. All this while we're being told there's no money. All this despite the fact that I had prepared an alternate path that relied on open source and free (as in beer) software which met all of our needs. Why? Because the executive committee, or at least the only one on it with a backbone, decided that anything that is downloaded is bad. Never mind the fact that I countered that by saying that all of the software required could be acquired without download. Unfortunately, there's still a mindset among the people who write the cheques that Microsoft is the best option. So they'll shell out $50,000 per for Office, while their underpaid staff continue to leave to work for better managed companies.
This is the second time since I started working here that management hasn't followed my recommendations. The first time was a disaster. Hmmm, let's peer into my crystal ball...
"...everybody lies with performance figures."
"...lies..."
Inappropriate, uncalled for, and absolutely unacceptable. In the absence of accountability, I at least demand accuracy.
The example I used is based on an experience I had with Exchange Server crashing uncontrollably. It was running on one of the sweetest Compaq servers I have seen to date, with things like UltraSCSI RAID 5 and over a gigabyte of memory (back when that meant something.) I was working for a VAR, and we had the support contract for this machine. Microsoft Knowledgebase: useless. Phone call to MS: no help, $90 down the drain. The one guy in our company who'd dealt with it before on the phone: priceless.
Before you berate me for being clueless, get this -- the thing was crashing while unplugged from the network! That's right, zero load, no users. It was weird... but it eventually got fixed.
You're probably right; whoever made that purchase decision ought to be flogged.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Increasing numbers and what caused those number to increase ....
I recall years ago that due to all sorts of deal MS was doing, like with MSNBC, their stock value went up.
MS of course turned it around and siad their products are so popular that their stock went up.
The fact is the newest version of there software them was having all sorts of problems and business were even
being warned to not use it and wait for the bug fix version.
This distortion of fact is common place at MS. Even the recent inter office Memo to the AP wire service about
cracking down on security holes was really nothing more than MS doing damage control and using the communication
method of what was once identified as leaking internal memo. Where the fact of the matter is that murphys law
prevails in that the more code that is used in a product the greater probability of bug and here, security breaches.
It's also becomming clearer and clearer that slashdot is being frequented by MS drones.
But I suppose it's a good idea to promote subscription services because that's an area that the GNU projects can easily
beat.
You can run the software forever- there's no new fees. You just can't call MS and expect support, or any new patches.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Or VMS, or bespoke, which is what most of the monitoring and control systems in the nuclear industry runs on. But this was becoming too expensive, and when last I was working in the industry, NT 3.51 had been settled on as their new OS of choice. I thought (and said) at the time that it was insane, but the decision had been made.
The point is that developers supplying this industry (and any other safety critical industry, think air traffic control or hospitals) absolutely have to be able to replicate older systems when they do any fixes or replacements. It's a contractual requirement, and it should be obvious why it makes sense.
As Microsoft moves towards software as a service, that's becoming harder and harder to do, and I shudder to think of the consequences of an applications contractor replacing an NT 3.51 system with an NT 4, Win2k, XP or (god help us) .NET system simply because it's too much trouble for them to get their hands an NT 3.51 install, or to source new hardware that NT 3.51 has drivers for. Think 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line. How many 1982 OS's will run on modern commodity hardware?
Ironically, the reason for the move from VMS and proprietary OS's to MS was that the industry was instructed to cut the ties to proprietary solutions for budget reasons (sourcing old hardware to replace broken VMS consoles cost a fortune). So now they're tied to MS, who have a clearly stated obsolescence policy. It's practically guaranteed that 2002 vintage WinXP won't be installable on 2022 hardware. NT is already unsupported, and 2K will be when .NET rolls out. So we're back to the same problems of replicating builds and sourcing old hardware to match the OS.
Was that clear enough? Corporate America is not just cube farms writing documents and browsing Dilbert, it's the very infrastructure of the country. Sections of that infrastructure cannot (or should not!) allow themselves to be railroaded into using systems with built in obselescence, which is why software-as-a-service is going to have a very, very hard sell in those sectors.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If you rent software, it's on the books as an expense.
If you "buy" software, it's on the books as a Capital Expenditure, i.e. an asset.
Soooo, given a choice which one will the bean counters choose?
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Someone should tell the antivirus companies that subscription doesn't work.
It completely pisses me off that now I have to essentially "repurchase" my anti-virus software every year or two in order to keep getting auto updates. (Yes, I can manually update the AV data files, but that's a pain in the ass in a multi-user environment of any reasonable size.)
Remember when you bought your AV software once and got updates for ever?
load "windows7"
And just three months ago Enron was the largest most successful energy company in America, at least according to their financials. Accounting is often the black magic used to decieve investors and the government alike.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
translation- "Microsoft Licensing 6.0 wants to cum on your face"
If you were a corporate exec: which would you rather do?
(A): Give up control of mission critical services to a third party thats only interest is to increase the bottom line.
or
(B): Keep it in-house, so you can keep your eyes on it.
Most corporations realize that it isn't wise to let important company services be controled by an outsider.
...between this subscription model and one where you have to renew your license annually else the software stop working? Well, IMHO, beyond being potentially more ``fine-grained'', not much. We were using a software package that required that we receive new license keys from the vendor each year. The package was expensive and any delays on the vendor's side in processing your paid invoice and getting the keys out to the customer were not considered to be their problem. I've worked at companies that were held hostage by vendors like this. In one case we were able to tell them ``No thanks'' when it came time to renew since their software wasn't Y2K compliant and the version that was would have required a whole lot of other software to be upgraded. And there were a whole lot of reasons why this wasn't possible. (As it turned out, this vendor's software could be replaced with a Perl script that provided the 99% of the functionality that people actually used.)
Businesses are going to look damned hard at any model that potentially halts their ability to function because of billing problems, communications delays, etc. It's one thing to have to subscribe to a support service so that configuration issues, bug fixes, etc. can be solved. But having to open up the check book just to be able to continue writing documents, doing spreadsheets, etc. just isn't going to be popular. And especially if it requires that proprietary business data actually have to reside on someone else's computers.
Just my US$0.02...
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
:)
hawk
I work for a fortune 500, whom will remain unnammed.[But I will say we make power tools, lots, and everyone has heard of us.]
.. because this was the first time they heard we were going to be PAYING a subscription fee annualy!]
.. they actually started to consider an open source solution. [the 2 camps are digging trenches now.]
.. "do you want to pay 200k or 700k" and totally ignoring the new policy where you have to pay an annual fee on NT which was written in 1993.
.. and seemed desperate to me .. now i know why .. we would have been a fairly well branded chip to show people that this was how big business does things .
We are very in bed with MS software wise, much to my chagrin.
A few months ago MicroSoft was in pitching to us that we should upgrade from NT4 to WIN2k for our network & desktop machines.
The sales guy's pitch was that if we did it *NOW* it would only cost us $200k more a year on our annual subscription fees, if we did it now - or $700k more a year if we waitied till our licence expired. [At which point 1/2 the people in the room blinked
Keeping in mind how in LOVE with MS our support team is
The scarey part is that MS was using a simple drop close
The guy was REALLY pushy
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
And another leasing issue. The Commonwealth College of Penn State has switched from "buy new faculty a desktop, and let the future take care of itself" to "lease laptops for three years." I can't help but believe that the availablity of funds somewhere for "oooh, go with laptops!" was better than desktops, but I'm getting the impression from some places that the "go away in 3 years" is actually desired by our campus (not IT) administrators--we've had people with several year old computers; this *forces* the system to keep us up to date. (we have about 3 apple II's still in use, but that's another issue--it's special software that works just fine).
hawk
What is this? Babbling nonsense day on slashdot?
"Not to be off topic - but this is illegal. "
You can downgrade licenses purchased under a volume license agreement, but yep not OEM licenses.
"I seen a lot of posts that state NT4 is running fine for that web site (its much easier to secure - that's why people are still using it) "
Well that's certainly not true. Windows 2000 is much better as a web server and far easier to secure.
Furthermore, NT 4.0 goes on the unsupported list this year.
A few months ago, inspired in part by Slashdot, I decided to try and bring some order to my websites. Instead of maintaining everything locally, I thought it would be cool to learn Perl and write a few basic scripts to manage things. The scripts worked OK (most of the time) but I discovererd that I just didn't like synchronizing from server to local. I was more comfortable syncing the other direction, and I liked the idea that my local copy was "the master".
Now, this is with scripts that I wrote, on a server where I have control of my data, on websites that are just for fun, and I still didn't like it.
I had suspected this before, but the experience confirmed it. At that point I have to ask myself, "Why am I willing to let Slashdot control my posts?". The only answers I can come up with are:
1. I was preconditioned by USENET that comments are somewhat expendable.
2. because they tend to be topical, I am not overly concerned about preserving them.
That said, it would be nice if Slashdot made it easier to access any post that I had ever archived. As it stands, Google can pull up a lot of them. The very nature of corporate ASPs is such that Google is not going to archive your data... at least, I hope not... hmm... but if the data were encrypted you could scam on all that Google capacity (evil grin).
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Close to 70% of survey respondents said their company has no plans to upgrade to any Microsoft XP products (operating system, Office) at this time. Slightly more than one quarter of IT professionals surveyed are considering Linux as an alternative operating system to Microsoft and 65% are not considering alternatives at this time.
What on earth are you licensing for that price? Visual Studio for every salesman?
sulli
RTFJ.
At our small to mid size government shop we looked long and hard at the subscription service. The flaw for us it that the subscription service is based on upgrading every two years. We do not have the resources to roll out new OS/Productivity every two years. We are now upgrading from Win95 to Win2K and that will take 2 years alone. We calculated a 4 to 5 year cycle and with that purchasing the software outright is cheaper.
Basically, we're a java/Linux shop and Windows installs are regarded as a necessary evil. There are some things that we have to do that for both licensing and technical reasons (the media player HAS to be part of the operating system, right?) need to be run on windows. But every windows install is an ongoing liability. They're a pain to build and configure, unreliable, configurations differ for no apparent reason, managing large numbers of rackmounts is a nightmare, etc. etc. You've heard it all before. But the advent of XP fills us with dread. The question is not whether we'll adopt it, but whether this one will seriously damage the company.
It kind of feels like the living in Sarajevo and being shelled by the troops up on the hill. Incoming! Licensing bombs have hit the spiders, sarge! Oh no! More breakage in the media crackers! Can we repair it or do we have to abandon the codec? I mean, it's a wintel world out there, and ours is a volume business, and if we reimplement stuff ourselves we'll be attacked by hordes of mutant ninja lawyers.
It's not like we can ignore it. Bill farts, we run for cover. We are small, the death star is merciless.
As a M$ shareholder, I beg to differ. When they were selling product in the normal way (with perpetual licenses and no asinine "activation"), my shares were worth $135 or so, and split fairly regularly. They bombed down to around $40 because of the DoJ thing and the general dot-com slide, but that's become a non-factor -- by now everyone knows M$ is going to get away with whatever they want, and the dot-bombs have all long since detonated.
IMO the biggest reason M$'s share price has not rebounded (and is still hovering at about $60 and hasn't split in ages) is NOT because of ongoing fear about M$'s future under the DoJ's eye, but because subscription licensing, WPA, the overblown cost to value ratio for WinXP, and similar bullshit, have degraded the value of M$ where the real money is, in the corporate purchasing dept.
So as a M$ shareholder, this nonsense is COSTING me money. It sure as hell isn't doing anything positive for my stock value!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
No fair! You can't leave it lying just like that!
What the hell was the problem????
OT: I once worked on a proprietary system, where the best way to crash the box was to leave it alone for 6 hours (there was an error in the timer logic -- we fixed as soon as we found it).
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
No shit, sounds like a HARDWARE problem at that point. He just argued himself out of an argument!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Been playing the Half-life Beta 1.4, and they switched it to a "cache" file system. You have to download some part of the program every time. Also no lan play. They also get to charge a nice subscription fee also. Only bad part, is you have to cache every game for the levels to load. How do you cache a 500 meg game over a modem? The only nice feature, is you can cache in the background, while you do other things. Good thing, they stop the cheating for now.
The rumors are, if you own an older version you dont have to pay a subscription, if buy the newer online only version, you have to pay a subscription fee. Ka-Ching!
It's the expensive subscriptions that don't. Who wants to pay full price for a new copy of MS Word every year when the one from five years ago still works. A $5-$10 a year subscription over the lifetime of a product would go over very well, but a $50-$100 one will ALWAYS fail.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I think the big problem with software as a service is that people think they own software right now. Most home users I know don't bother to read the license -- they think it's a combination of a warantee and a "do not copy" clause. Most corporate users I know think the same thing -- and some of them think that the license exists to protect THEM (this has come up in some of the Free Software conversations I've had: "but there's no license! Who can we hold responsible?").
They are, of course, wrong from a legal standpoint. But the interesting thing is that whatever reality is, perception affects buying just as much, and since buyers currently think they actually purchase the software, trying to get them to do something else is tricky.
It will, of course, be interesting to see what happens as technical efforts to drive the legal reality of not owning software home increase. I'm not sure if it'll result in people raising hell and a revolution, or if they'll just lowe a little and move along like so many cattle.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
As noted the new interface may have some benefits but there's an associated learning curve (nothing matches the screenshots and yes that throws lots of folks.)
XP is 90-something percent backwards compatible but that few percent is where madness lies. Not all vendors certify or support their products on XP yet which leads into fingerpointing hell. For those that do it requires the latest version which means another rollout and likely more licensing costs (for something we may have had running fine, paid for and satified with under 2K.) Again, do the benefits outweigh the costs & risks?
XP undoubtably includes a newer driver set but its also not backwards compatible with all of the hardware currently running under 2K. Some percentage of cards / readers / scanners / printers / security devices / etc. won't work and will need to be identified and replaced.
There was a benefit going from DOS to Windows - it had a GUI and just as importantly unified printer and video drivers. Windows 95 offered many more services and greatly improved stability. Win98 et al was a less compelling upgrade but at least it meant yet more stability and new drivers. NT 3.51 was rocky but continued to improve, albeit with the Great Interface Shift. WinME went nowhere for most folks. Win2k does well enough though most places are still wrestling if/with ADS. XP - XP offers what? And is what it offers worth the costs?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
"I have 14 steps to secure an NT4 IIS box. "
Then you probably are not adequately securing your NT4 IIS box.
Using policies on Win2k you can go quite far. If there are services you don't want running, then can be defaulted to disabled through a policy. Registry entries, file permissions, and a variety of account and system settings can be automated through policies.
Locking down the IIS configuration is more difficult, but you could either use the IIS Lockdown tool. Or if your web servers tend to be identical this could be accomplished through WSH scripts.
Some of these automation and policy objects are available with NT4, but not all, which is why I say it's easier to lock down Win2k.
Securing a Win2k IIS server through group policy objects is the topic of the GCNT practical I'm currently working on, so I think I'm pretty familiar with this.
MS will stop releasing hotfixes for NT4. That's what being "unsupported" means. Besides, we call Microsoft for support quite frequently, and they've been very helpful.
Maybe instead of pining away for BSD/Apache, you should spend your efforts learning the platform you currently support. Attending the SANS Conference track on Securing Windows 2000 is quite enlightening.
These may sound somewhat trivial, but in my business (banking) data and process ownership are crucial.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
Interestingly, though, this can make life difficult for the vendor. While the subscription model has its advantages (dependable revenue stream even after 100% customer adoption of your product, low incremental start-up costs for your customers), it can also be deadly to a startup.
The basic problem is that costs grow at the same rate for a company selling shrink-wrapped software or subscription software. However, where shrink-wrapped vendors get paid in large chunks (at least for serious enterprise software, $50K++), subscription vendors get paid in increments. As a result, revenues can severely lag costs--you've borne the expense of developing, selling and supporting the product, but you haven't recouped much money until you sign up lots of customers (leading to rising sales and support costs).
In a profitable company, this isn't deadly. But for a startup, every dollar in losses must be funded through selling stock. Booking revenues is the best way to increase the value of your company and to give up less stock in each sale, thereby preserving your ownership. In times like these, when funding is hard to come by, slow revenue progress can equal death.
The other issue, which applies to all companies, is that you're putting off a stream of payments (revenues) into the future, instead of collecting it all at once. Based on the time value of money, the sum of the subcription payments must exceed the up-front purchase price (as there is a discount factor for dollars to be collected way out into the future). The basic idea is that if you had the full lump sum today, you could invest it over the same time period of the contract. To your customers, it's a wash economically. But in a competitive market, it might be trouble, as it might mean you have to charge incrementally higher prices, leaving you vulnerable to competitors.
Finally, figuring out the pricing of an ASP subscription is really tough. How many months of payments should be required to have equalled the up-front license cost? Set it too low, and your customers get sticker shock. Set it too high, and you just put your own revenues further and further out into the future. Software pricing can be pretty arbitrary to begin with, and ASP models can add a layer of complexity. It's not that they can't succeed--plenty of businesses bill per-month. It's just a question of whether it's the right model for enterprise software companies.
Do I assume you have seen both my last journal entry here on slashdot and my home page?
Funny, but according to the three most popular religions, someone other than god is going to do it.
I suspect it will be not one but the people and in the spirit of GPL.
We have the knowledge.
Yeah I looked at both of them and no I don't work for MS.
Which raises the question, do religions always tell the truth or do they tell people what they need to hear?
I would like to believe you but truth is : "no pain, no gain". Poverty, wars, crimes, problems, pain, etc. played and continue to play a necessary part in our evolution. But hey, I sure hope that I'm wrong.
Yep, I'm sure you're right about the thought process in M$'s PHB department -- IMO, Ballmer in particular believes more copies sold more often equals more revenue, especially if consumers have no choice about upgrading (whereas Gates merely wants to take over the world, for its own good of course). But as you say, that doesn't necessarily mean it works -- it's all fine and dandy until people decide they won't be forced to buy what they don't need!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
viruses. That's what you need protection from.
It's funny. Laugh.
Both of those can be accomplished with netmeeting on w2k not to mention VNC.
War is necrophilia.
"Do we really need all this stuff for a web server, or a file server, or even an app server in most cases."
No, not individually, but you do if you are making a generic OS which could be used for any one of those tasks.
"I'll admit that the policys are probly fine and work well once you spend the time with them. "
No understandable. We have the same problems at work, there's no time to bleed just get it done.
"But as with OpenBSD - a 4 year default install with NO hacks to it. Sounds like a pretty secure box to me."
Yeah, but it doesn't do anything. What's the point? It's sort of like running the C2 tool on Windows, yeah it makes it secure but it sure doesn't help you get work done.
"M$ is going to write hotfixes for NT 4 till Jan 1, 2005."
Well ok, if you are willing to pay for them, hotfixes will no longer be release for free after Jan 1, 2003. And non-security related ones wouldn't even be offered after Jan 1, 2004.
It's basically end of the line.
Honestly with as many problems as we solved moving our Web and App servers from NT4 to Win2k I cannot possibly imagine why people still use NT4.
But we have business people who claim NT4 is good enough for their desktops and they don't want to buy XP. Ok, great, but stop complaining about problems.
Or PCAnywhere, or some hardware proprietary solution (there is for sure one from Compaq, I don't remember its name though. For sure it's widely used in my company).
"... The licenses are often strict, like we only get a couple of SQLServer licenses, but in general it meets, and has met everything we needed. ..."
You can get beta and final SW with the MSDN subscription, and the license allows you to distribute some copies in your organisation. But the last time I read it, the SW is for testing purposes only; if you're running a business off it you're in violation (and MS reserves the right to cut you off when they find out).
The thing about the future is...
Something Could Happen.
As a business owner, you want to minimise uncertainty. Having an enterprise, large or small, run on SW that will quit working on day X brings up all kinds of previously irrelevant fears.
What if we're "going a little broke"? Will the upgrade bill (whatever it is; no certainty there either) kill us just when we need to weather the storm? Maybe everything stops, and we can't keep on keeping on while we try to figure out how to get back to profitability.
What do you think the bean counters (who are running the company under court protection) are going to say to a huge license renewal when we're restructuring?
For a small business, this is really troubling stuff; all it would take is one large enterprise getting shut down (read all about it) "because the license renewal wasn't viable at this time", and the operative word will be "nix" as in "nix that, we're going Open Source now while we still can".