Re: Bundling of layered software

[BUCKMAN@ALAN.kahuna.decnet.lasc-research.lockheed.com (Eric Buckman))]

    Date: Thu, 22 Mar 90 09:50 CST
    From: dmitchell@backus.trc.amoco.com (Donald H. Mitchell)

      Date: Thu, 22 Mar 90 09:05 CST
      From: Richard Billington <buff%pravda@gatech.edu>
	    [...]
      Symbolics has been a leader in "bundling" tools and extensions to lisp (tools: windows,
      zmacs, debugger, examiners - extensions: loop, flavors, clim) to the point where every
      major addition to what is becoming a part of the accepted "minimum production lisp
      environment" is something that has become a standard part of Genera for at least a
      couple of years already.

    I've changed my mind.  Now I agree!  The full richness of the development
    environment is THE selling point for Symbolics's products.  Bundling would
    keep Symbolics well ahead of the competition.   In the current unbundled
    configuration in which Statice and Concordia are each more expensive than
    Genera and more expensive than the analogs that I can point to when trying to
    convince management that I need them, I've been very reluctant to try to get
    them.  In fact, I haven't purchased Statice (although I'd love to) and I've
    only now purchased one copy of Concordia.  Even at that, my Symbolics sales
    rep tried to ensure that I REALLY needed Concordia and wasn't buying it merely
    to extend the development environment.  (A strange strategy :-).

    How much do the high-powered CASE tools cost these days?  If
    Genera+Statice+Concordia+CLIM was roughly equal and bundled, I think I could sell
    it to my management.  As it is, I have to compare Genera at $9500 with Lucid
    at $2500, Concordia at $10000 with Interleaf at $1500, and Statice at $10000
    (or is it $7500?) with Oracle at (how much), and CLIM with OpenLook and
    Motif.  Well, anyway, you get the picture.  I have to have four arguments when
    only one would do (Four makes me look like I'm asking for more than my share).

I'd vote one big "DITTO" for at least the 15 or so Symbolics machines in our lab
at Lockheed, and another DITTO to the 60 or so machines we have around that we
are trying to deliver software to.  For instance, we did purchase one copy of
Statice, but have recently decided to postpone using it, where one dominant
factor is that a good number of our Lockheed customers cannot be hooked up to
our ethernet (security issues), and therefore couldn't use our Statice server,
hence, our software would not be "free" to our Lockheed customers that already
have Symbolics machines.  However, if Symbolics had bundled the stuff together
(and charged maybe a onetime "upgrade" additional software maintanance fee, and
maybe even upped our software maintainance costs because they were now
maintaining a larger piece of software i.e. Genera+Statice+Concordia+CLIM, then
development and delivery might work out better for us.  Of course, I don't think
I really know what all the implications are, but I do feel that a "Bundled
Genera" option from Symbolics would certainly open up possibilities.