General Consultant Discussion

This sounds familiar http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241528/Buried_in_software_licensing

Very interesting article. However, comparing Netsuite's $100/user (nobody pays close to that after year 1) to SAP R/3's license is like comparing Quickbooks pricing to X3. Clearly the writer doesn't understand the difference. Any SaaS solution that has the depth & breadth of Oracle or SAP is going to make their 22% maintenance bill look cheap, and forget about the 6 to 7 figure implementation and data conversion.

Where microsoft is tougher than even SAP is they will NOT sell you additional user licenses if you are off maintenance. I think Sage does that as well. Sounds like Oracle and SAP will. This is a big line in the sand that really forces a company to make a serious decision.

And the comment about maintenance being 90% profit is dead on. This is why its tough to sell to a MAS customer that their $8k maintenance bill is worth it when they are receiving about $800 in actual value

The biggest selling point to some larger Sage 100 customers is that their $12,000 maintenance could be $200,000 (or more) if they were on Oracle/SAP. Still the feeling that you're being ripped off with maintenance is definitely not altogether unwarranted.