

SAP significantly boosts service costs, angering customers - procrastitron
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/25/sap_user_group_price_complaint/

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makecheck
One of the huge challenges is breaking into the mindset of many decision-
makers. And, logic isn't necessarily a factor.

It appears many IT shops get a warm fuzzy out of writing huge checks to
companies for software. The primary reason I've seen for this is to have
"support", even if "support" is an ill-defined term and the software is beyond
lousy.

Why do they care about support? Simple: they are _paranoid_ that some
important thing will break and they will be blamed for it. If there's a
company they can sue, or otherwise point the finger at, they're overjoyed. I
have seen this behavior painfully often, it has nothing to do with actual
productivity.

Since it's already proven difficult to convince these groups that _free_
software (even with a support company) is viable, I expect SAP will simply get
its free money. Most groups will write a fatter check and move on.

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procrastitron
This reminded my of the recent post by Paul Graham, where he mentioned
enterprise software companies charging excessive rates for horrible software.
Is anyone taking advantage of this to compete against SAP?

