Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Death of Licensed Enterprise Software?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the all-things-must-come-to-an-end dept.

tfsm writes "Andy Singleton wrote a short, interesting article about the looming death of traditionally licensed, proprietary, enterprise software over at The IT Manager's Journal. In it, he talks about the declining revenues of software giants such as Siebel. There are several causes, but one, he suggests, is erosion from Open Source offerings."

1 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. "Support" by maynard · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're talking about boxed software then support is limited to a "knowledge base" database and rudimentary and usually dire scripted phone support.

    Out of the box commercial software pretty much like this. However, if you're talking enterprise solutions from Oracle, SAP, IBM, EMC, NetAPP, and even Sun (unfortunately, whose support quality has declined recently IMO) then it's a different game. Pay for a contract and you will get highly knowlegable engineers to solve whatever problem that crops up within the confines of the contract. I've been very impressed by IBM in the past. DEC used to have pheonominal support. So, while your copy of TurboTax may not get you the support you feel you deserve, it's not the same with big iron hardware and enterprise software. At least, not in my experience. --M