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Technology Stocks : Enterprise Informatics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg h2o who wrote (2936)	12/7/1998 11:56:00 AM
From: bob zagorin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13797

it certainly could occur but i would guess, if they're satisfied, an upgrade would be cheaper than switching. i guess that's why EB becomes so key; if we're talking about major upgrades (like EB) then i think they would solicit additional proposals.

To: Greg h2o who wrote (2936)	12/7/1998 12:12:00 PM
From: jackhach	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13797

Ya, I have... The familiarity/affinity of use factor. Probably, the single most important reason why companies, often in spite of themselves, continue to upgarde existing applications. The reasoning, for the most part, is emotional, and not always logical. The company cannot admit it may have made a mistake with the prior version of a product and wants to feel (and often rightly so) that the vendor of the existing application(s) knows "what needs to be fixed/rectified". This is even more likely in an e-wide solution. Additionally, the company has established a relationship with the existing vendor and this is an (an unquantifiably) enormous factor. Now, if ALTS has done poorly in maintaining these relationships -- boo on them, however, the logistics of changing ewide vendors/applications make it possible for the existing vendor to get away with quite a bit more then might otherwise be tolerable with other types of purchases. If the account is still alive, and you come through the door with a seamless or semi-seamless legitimate fixes/improvements on the bulk/majority of the application's woes -- you have a very clear and distinct advantage over your competition despite what they may have to offer. EB provides this and far, far more. With regard to the Y2K issue, it is almost a non issue. There isn't an application provider in the world not addressing this problem with current/next versions of their respective applications. So the argument of existing Y2K compliance is pretty much a wash. -JH