XPost: comp.databases.ibm-db2   
   From: dmcbride@naboo.to.org.no.spam.for.me   
      
   michael newport wrote:   
      
   >> 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.   
   >   
   > I agree support costs money.   
   > But this is not product dependent.   
   > It depends on the support you need.   
   >   
   > Mature products give you peace of mind, and Ingres has a long history.   
      
   Not quite - unchanging products give you peace of mind - as long as new   
   features are added, things can break.   
      
   >> 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...   
   >   
   > Again, these costs are entirely dependent on people, not product.   
   >   
   > More importantly OpenSource software is yours to change.   
      
   Ok, I see where you're coming from now.  But I think you missed   
   something.  If I use a smaller product, such as Ingres, which doesn't   
   have a function which takes me 4 weeks to implement, vs using Oracle or   
   DB2 or MSSQL (big three) which does have that function, saving me, in   
   effect, 4 weeks of development, then the "pricey" database just cost me   
   nothing - the costs and the savings cancel each other out.   
      
   Small, stable vendor means reinventing the wheel on many projects.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)