eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Just when it looked like the pressure was letting up on Computer Associates International Inc., competitors are turning up the heat on the Islandia, N.Y., companys software pricing.
Allen Systems Group Inc. this week at Gartner Inc.s Symposium ITxpo in Orlando, Fla., will launch an expansion of its CA product replacement program that extends ASGs lower-pricing option across its entire product portfolio.
The Better Option Plan calls for ASG to replace comparable CA Unicenter products with its own for only the cost of ASGs annual maintenance fee.
“ASG will convert you from your current CA licenses without charging you an upfront license fee,” said Kristine Rieger, chief operating officer for the privately held company in Naples, Fla. “That allows customers to quickly realize savings with the ASG pricing model.” Rieger said ASG maintenance fees are lower than CAs.
A similar program that included only job-scheduling software resulted in 150 CA Unicenter customers switching to ASG, company officials said. One such customer found “room to grow” with ASGs pricing.
“We were in a mips-based contract with CA,” said the customer, who asked not to be named. “We needed to increase mips within our data center. Every time we wanted to add capacity to our mainframe, wed have to pay additional money to CA for that increase. We decided to replace our scheduling tools. ASG gave us an unlimited amount of mips. It came down to dollars and cents.”
Although the expansion of ASGs replacement pricing plan may be a move to exploit uncertainty about CAs future, few CA customers are looking to abandon their tools, according to Corey Ferengul, an analyst with Meta Group Inc., in Chicago.
“I dont see a big exodus of CA customers right now. People have concerns but not enough to warrant replacing CA yet,” Ferengul said.
Be sure to add our eWEEK.com enterprise applications news feed to your RSS newsreader or My Yahoo page