Hello? <vent>

[Jeff Hoffman]

At 04:58 pm 28/10/98 -0600, John Backus wrote:
>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.

I have to agree with John, I had hoped Cognos would learn from the sale of
PC products to keep the price competative, there are a lot of small users
out there that would use PH except for the price.

I was kinda hoping the Web extensions to PH would be packaged with normal
upgrades for users with existing maintenance contracts, however even here
they are looking at slugging their existing users, most probably so much
that they will start using, or continue to convert to, PC based GUI stuff.

As Cognos has not announced the prices yet of the PH Web extension, I can
always live in hope.



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+ Jeff Hoffman                         + e-mail: J.Hoffman@cchs.usyd.EDU.AU +
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