The August 3oth issue of Infoworld features a story on Software Pricing and Complexity. Amen. Here is where KISS and Occams Razor could be used.
But amid all the wrangling and evolving and devolving pricing mechanisms, this party is beginning to take on new respect for the SAS Institutes approach. An annual renewal fee. Sun is doing the same with its breakthrough pricing for the JDS-Java Desktop System and JES-Java Enterprise System. Get a complete software stack for a fixed fee of $150 for JDS or $250 for JES per user per year. Prices guaranteed not to increase faster than the rate of inflation.
There is still the problem of literally thousands of external online users – some occasional, some quite heavy users. Per server licensing for external facing systems may be a solution. And Web Services mean that this external component could become quite large. So quite obviously, thinking laterally will have to occur in the new world of software pricing.