4GL vendors cut fees to attract 3000 sites

Speedware, Cognos change licensing structures, start promos to win back 3000 market

Two of the most established players in HP 3000 application development are working to win back business with an old fashioned strategy — dropping prices. They’re doing it to get a share of what they see as a rising MPE/iX marketplace.

Speedware Corp. and Cognos Corp. are participating in HP’s “Genius” promotion this summer, cutting prices on their software when a customer buys or upgrades to a Series 9x9 HP 3000. But more importantly, the two companies are taking steps to lower licensing barriers — a classic complaint heard from owners of their 4GL and reporting products.

Speedware’s revisions appear more radical. The company is eliminating tier pricing on its Visual Speedware and Autobahn development suites, shifting to a user-based pricing model. Visual Speedware relies on Visual Basic for its interface, while Autobahn uses the Web as its front end for applications.

The classic, character-based Speedware 4GL product remains on a tier-based price schedule for now. That’s one where the size of the HP 3000 CPU determines how much the software costs to buy — and more significantly, sets the upgrade fees that must be paid when moving between the 15 tiers. Speedware said it’s starting user-based licensing with its newer products, then considering whether it will apply the plan to the classic Speedware licenses.

The upgrade fees won’t be levied for the newer Speedware products, a change that follows Speedware corporate restructuring over the last year. “We’re reinventing our company,” said Chris Koppe, Speedware’s Marketing Director, “and the 3000 market is under-serviced.” Speedware announced late this spring that it had signed a joint marketing agreement with HP. As part of this agreement, Speedware is giving its customers 25 percent cash off the price of Visual Speedware or Speedware Autobahn licenses when purchased with a Series 9x9 HP 3000 until August 31. Speedware is also cutting training costs by 50 percent and taking 20 percent off a three-year technical support contract if customers buy or upgrade to the 9x9s.

In its new licensing structure, Speedware switched to a per-user license arrangement and dropped tier-based licensing and upgrade fees for Visual Speedware and Autobahn. It’s also eliminated the database interface charge for these products, a 15 percent surcharge if a customer wanted to access more than one kind of database.

In the new price structure, customers buy runtime user licenses in packs of five. Prices start at $500 a seat and go down after 25 seats purchased and again after 50 seats. The seats are licensed for concurrent access. One developer license costs $5,000, and a one-developer/one-runtime seat standalone license is also available.

Speedware officials said the new licensing for the newer products lets companies scale up their 3000 systems without paying a licensing penalty.

“HP is trying to eliminate tiers, and this simplifies the pricing model for us and streamlines the decision process for purchases,” said Product Marketing Manager Robert Morrisette. “The only time you’ll spend more money is if you increase the number of [seats] for users or developers.”

The other major fourth generation language supplier in the 3000 market, Cognos, is also changing its licensing policies. Cognos’ plan differs from Speedware’s in many ways. The new pricing can be applied to existing PowerHouse licensing, but it remains a tier-based model. However, Cognos has introduced a simplified, three-tier license plan, in addition to its existing 30-tier schedule.

Cognos Product Manager Conrad Whittall said the company does user-based licensing on other platforms, but those models are “not quite the same as the one we have just introduced for the HP 3000— for example, on those other platforms, third-party license management software is available to help us administer the PowerHouse licenses and usage.”

Cognos is operating both its old and new pricing at once, a plan that would give existing customers more choices when upgrading. HP’s license plan for its operating system and databases was the model for the new Cognos pricing.

“We listened to what [customers] have been saying and have responded by creating this new PowerHouse pricing structure, based on the HP tiers and on the number of users for which the HP [operating system] is licensed,” Whittall said. “This shows our absolute commitment to the HP 3000, and to the application development tools market in general.

“The choice [of pricing plans] is theirs, as is the timing of the move should they decide to make it. For some customers, the current CPU-based model works well, while for others the new FOS-based user pricing will be preferred.” Whittall said Cognos’ CPU-based licenses allow for an unlimited number of users.

Cognos customers complain regularly at user group meetings about the costs of upgrading Cognos products during 3000 upgrades. The new pricing plan sets three levels equivalent to HP’s 310, 330 and 340 Tiers for operating system licenses, and follows the user license breaks within those tiers. As an example, Whittall quoted prices including $7,800 for a bottom tier, eight-user PowerHouse development license, and a cost of $24,900 for PowerHouse runtime with (Quiz) reporting on an HP Tier 330 (Series 9x9) machine licensed for a 100-user maximum.

Whittall said that a customer who had no plans to upgrade a system and was already at the unlimited user license level for MPE/iX might opt to stay with the older, CPU-based pricing.

Cognos has also extended a support renewal offer to sites running Quiz with MANMAN applications. These customers haven’t renewed support for Quiz, and are consequently working with older versions of the report writer. Cognos has dropped its usual return-to-support fees for the MANMAN sites if they sign up for one year of support, offered at a 20 percent discount directly from Cognos to get the latest version of Quiz as well as future versions.

The support fees are based on the current value of the license that the customer holds. Whittall said a MANMAN customer with a Series 929KS/020 would probably see an initial support renewal fee of $6,800, because they would be on the older CPU-based “unlimited users” pricing.

Cognos is also participating in HP’s Genius 9x9 promotion this summer — giving away a free, unlimited-user license of its PowerHouse Web development suite when a customer upgrades a PowerHouse license while buying or trading up to a Series 9x9. Cognos said the software is valued at $13,500. PowerHouse Web isn’t yet available for HP 3000s; Whittall said Cognos expects to release it in September.