Hello? <vent>

[John Backus]

Given the vent of a couple of postings on the HP3000-list today, which
are concerning Cognos' upgrade policies, I wish to express my sadness
that Cognos continues to 'bite the hands that feed it'.

In June of this year I posted:

I have been working with HP3000 MPE systems for about 15 years now.
Cognos' PowerHouse products like QTP,QUIZ,QUICK,QDD,PDL have been
encountered at several organizations along the way.  I think PowerHouse
is a good product.  Good products usually command a good price and this
is fair.

Maybe I am wrong but doesn't Cognos have a reputation for setting the price
of these products at such high prices (especially upgrade fees) that they
make their products prohibitive to many customers?  I really regret this
and wonder why this is done.  It seems to me that this sort of marketing
was proven flawed by such real life cases as Microsoft VS Apple.  Apple had
(has?) a superior OS that was priced much to high in comparison to
Microsoft, Microsoft got marketshare and the good things that go with it,
including a lot of profit.

Here goes some wishful thinking.  I wish Cognos would increase their
marketshare in the HP3000 MPE market by making the pricing much more
reasonable.  This would also contribute to the renaissance that HP3000 MPE
is currently experiencing.

Does Cognos plan on doing anything along these lines?  Perhaps the same
request can be made for DEC, IBM and other Cognos platforms too.  I am
specifically interested in HP3000 MPE though.

...


  Well, here we are 5 months later and apparently things have not
changed.  Cognos continues to price themselves out of loyal
customers.  For the short term this may be a profitable strategy but
I really doubt that this will win out in the long run.

Will Cognos endorse an HP3000 Renaissance?  In this area, I suppose
the answer is, "No".


John Backus
My opinion only and not my employer's, thank you.




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