Date:         Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:51:06 -0500
Reply-To:     "A. Michielsen" <amichielsen@COMCAST.NET>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "A. Michielsen" <amichielsen@COMCAST.NET>
Organization: Your Company
Subject:      Thoughts on SAS Pricing and WPS
Comments: To: sas-l@uga.edu

As a followup to the previous threads on SAS Pricing and WPS:
I didn't find a single place to use as a followup - there were
several different connections.

I support several 'retired/retiring' SAS Servers - that are
currenly being retained & licensed, annually - for the sole
purpose of information reference for legal purposes.

Likewise, I'm as Home SAS LE Licensee - for minor work - off hours.
I'm also fairly familiar with our site license costs for our various
active SAS Servers. I jumped at hearing about the potential savings
from WPS.

For a single user, with full functionality - the WPS is attractive
especially with the inclusion of the SAS Access functionality of
most interest to me.  However,  I'm not going to pay $600+ a year
for home access.  I paid under $100 for SAS LE for 3 or 4 years
whick works out to about $30 a year.  That I'll pay (for Limited
functionality for home) - but not $600.  For my Windows Servers,
the cost jumps quickly - and it's less than a 50% discount from SAS.
Likewise - on our MVS/ZOS platforms - the discount - while quite
considerable isn't fantastic.  Now, $600 a mainframe - that would
be tremendous savings.

The support, (enhanced) functionality, Client Side Compoents & Tools,
EG, IOM, ADO/Bridge, Integration Tools, BI (ok - EG & BI aren't free),
client server / distributed computing differences point to a
substantially different product 'experience' - ie - missing from WPS.

SAS has several times - changed, re-evaluated, modified, and revamped
their license and cost structure.  Even with what I've just said - I
_DO_ expect that SAS will review the pricing differences - and I expect
that at least some of that gap will be adjusted / tightened up over the
next couple years.  Discussions such as this - are in fact - monitored
by SAS - and are likely to have some impact on that happening.

However, nobody should expect that SAS will EVER price match WPS for
the components that WPS offers.  If you want to use WPS.  Go ahead and
drop your SAS license and switch over to WPS.  Income from your
investment can be used to further extend & enhance the platforms and
functionality available from WPS.  This will work to increase pricing
pressure on SAS for the rest of us that are probably unlikely to be
able to 'sell' the switch to our upper management.