Stunning relicense quote

[Ron Seybold]

Hi Friends,

Charles says, "I suspect that there could be more to the story than simply the Powerhouse license." It's a pretty good bet there's not much in that $300K quote other than licenses for Powerhouse and the related Cognos-built tools like Quiz and QTP. (I'm checking on that.) The shop has been moving to open source software, although the manager says that's got its issues, too. I don't think this is an all-in migration phase. That's coming, but this looks like a quote to get Powerhouse onto a Linux system where open source solutions are working. The system manager (James Bryne) has a passion for open source. This will send the 3000 into deep archive mode or even out of service. But moving Powerhouse is getting in the way of that. Or to be more accurate, the $300,000 is getting in the way of that.

In 2003 a company, Core Migration, started to sell a package and services that replaced Powerhouse with Java. It was not inexpensive. 2003 was the first year of full-on migration projects funded well enough to be meaningful. Here's an excerpt of what I wrote the year we found them.
"Cognos customers have shown concern over the company’s shift toward BI products, and are researching steps to move away from PowerHouse. CORE Migration, a company operating in Cognos’ headquarters city of Ottawa, has put together a migration suite of tools and services to move customers. One CORE white paper tells the story of an ERP software provider, Visaer, that first shifted away from its MPE PowerHouse roots, then off the 4GL altogether. The company decided that the focus at Cognos had moved away from PowerHouse."

"There are two ways of accessing the CORE Migration method, paths which may sound familiar to companies which are studying migration options: CORE-Directed, where the company manages the migration start to finish, and Self-Directed, where CORE plans the migration and trains customers to use its tools. CORE’s VP of Sales and Marketing Wayne Lucky said the CORE-Directed option is fastest, and the majority of its engagements are in this method.

“It depends on the skill set of the customer,” he said, “and whether they want to get involved.” 

Core does this work to this very day. They call it application modernization. When it's over you have Oracle SQL Server, DB2 or Eloquence at the heart of the modernized app. I'm certain this is what Charles does, too. For a full migration, $300,000 is not excessive.

Regarding Core and that 13-year-old reference above: It's always an interesting to see when a software+services company uses another software vendor as a customer reference. You'd have to believe the IT and development staff at a place like Visaer knows technology better than the average Powerhouse site. CORE-Directed might've been the popular option to get migrated off Powerhouse, but it's hard to imagine a software company not wanting to use its own staff for a migration of a key system.

All the best,

Ron Seybold
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