XPost: comp.databases.ibm-db2   
   From: dmcbride@naboo.to.org.no.spam.for.me   
      
   michael newport wrote:   
      
   >> Then again, perhaps it's not uncommon that when your opponent is   
   >> generally making no sense, that you stop reading his posts objectively,   
   >> and just assume that the whole argument is absurd, rather than just the   
   >> individual (and overwhelming) portions of it that really are absurd?   
   >   
   > which bit did you have trouble with ?   
      
   The lack of "T" in your "TCO".   
      
   I mean, there are many different costs in owning software.  Not just   
   the initial cost.   
      
   1. Purchase cost.   
      
   This is what you seem to be focusing on.  Unfortunately, it's not the   
   total cost.  For most larger databases, it isn't even always a   
   significant portion of the total cost.   
      
   2. Support costs.   
      
   This, with #1, is what you pay to the vendor, and often significantly   
   outweighs the purchase cost.  Sure, Ingres may be free to "purchase",   
   but what about support costs if/when something goes wrong?   
      
   At one time, support came free with purchase.  Nowadays, it is swinging   
   heavily in the other direction, especially with commodity (read: open   
   source) software.  The cost of 24/7 within-the-hour support is   
   significant, but so is its peace of mind.   
      
   3. Development costs.   
      
   This is what the purchaser spends to integrate the software into their   
   infrastructure.  This may be a lonely IT tech in a closet somewhere   
   figuring out how to get the software installed, or it may be an entire   
   software development engineering team with a few DBAs trying to   
   architect their business model inside the database.  Generally   
   speaking, this outweighs both #1 and #2 together.   
      
   If, then, the database product provides functions, stored procedures,   
   and other database-isms ("Oracle-isms" or "DB2-isms" for the newsgroups   
   getting this cross-posted) which save you 2 weeks of development time   
   in the pursuit of your business goals, right there you've saved a   
   significant portion of your purchase cost of any of the "expensive"   
   database vendors.  I know that 2 weeks of my time is worth way more   
   than $400 - although I suspect most DB2 or Oracle deployments cost more   
   than $400 in purchase costs.  Even with $20,000 in purchase costs, if   
   it saves me 4 weeks in development time, and a corresponding 1-2 weeks   
   in testing time (since I shouldn't need to debug that function - IBM or   
   Oracle have already done that for me), I've saved a significant portion   
   of that purchase cost... at least if I'm contracting.  And we get to   
   market (deployment) 5-6 weeks earlier.  If this new database   
   application is supposed to save the whole corporation 1 hour of work   
   per person per month, and there are 1000 employees, that's 1250-1500   
   hours saved in those extra 5-6 weeks, and it only takes an average of   
   $10/hour to pay for the rest of the purchase price of $20,000.  In   
   other words, the "purchase price" is FREE at the point where the   
   application would be deployed if I didn't have those extra built-in   
   functions.   
      
   And it's this last area that you seem to keep ignoring.  I don't think   
   it's me who is having trouble with the thread...   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)