General Consultant Discussion

Received an email from Blytheco stating that they will no longer be charging annual maintenance on custom modifications. Instead, they will create a ""statement of work"" when an end user wants to upgrade. This is quite interesting. They are moving away from the annual agreement annuity to a speck out each project approach that all MD's used to have.

Is that good or bad? I read that and it obviously will result in more dollars to them or they wouldn't be changing.

@JohnHoyt I don't know if it is good or bad. It is quite interesting though because it is the first i have seen a bigger company start to go against the ""annuity"" trend. I guess the good or bad argument depends on the percentage of customers that are current on maintenance, and the effort required to collect the maintenance. It would seem to be easier to calculate the profit on a project by project (as needed) basis. It is difficult to know what you make or lose on maintenance, particularly when the percent current varies by product, and when some users don't pay for several years and then want to upgrade. You cant make someone pay for 10 years of back maintenance when they can buy the product new for half that cost.