Licensing the CA Plex 7.0 .NET Client Generator

[Anon Anon]

Hi all,

I’m going to write one post here as I’m getting messages about it through several channels.

Now that CA Plex 7.0 is finally available, there is some surprise to many that we decided to make the new .NET Client generator a separately licensed item. This is true, and this was decided long ago.

In fact, we’ve been openly saying (on webcasts, at events) for years that any web client-related generator that we would develop ourselves would NOT be free with the bundled set of generators. There was a discussion about this in Chicago last fall.

I’m proud that with CA Plex we’ve created what is undoubtedly the greatest app dev tool with the greatest value on the planet to our customers. Whether or not this generator is free, the value gained by other new features and the total tool itself is second to none.

When all is said and done, and while it’s great that we’ve done a good job of spoiling our friends over the years (lol…so to speak) with free features like this, let’s remember:

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For years Plex generators were sold separately (pre-CA). The start-up costs were well in the range of $17K per seat.
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Our current web client solutions from partners are licensed separately. We aren’t looking to replace these offerings or run our partners out of business. It would simply kill the product.
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When all is said and done, I am looking for creative ways to generate additional new revenue through Plex. It is sold through channels (CA sales people generally do not sell Plex directly), and we need for ways to not only reward our sales channels, but we want to bring in some additional revenue in order to continue our support and development. This is true of any product, certainly not just Plex!

So the .NET Client generator is bundled with the EJB generator. This may seem unorthodox, but we wanted to do something else to showcase the multi-platform capabilities of Plex.

I hope this helps explain things a bit. Again, let me know if you have questions or concerns.

Thank you all for your ongoing interest and support of CA Plex.
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Best, Bill

[George Jeffcock]

Firstly thank you for the clarification and understand the business motives which in the end must come first to ensure continued support.

My confusion now is the "web client" statements. the Chicago pre classes there was only mentioned a unsupported "page" object that quote would be left in but not supported to help sites deliver web pages. But the focus has purely been on creating client dialogs to update the old c++ panels, with the slide show how there has been a long wait for the update, nothing about the web. In the plex beta the bugs reported were focused on the client panels and webservice import. I had been lead to believe that this could be a migration path for the old winc dialogs which is needed. I am not trying to be argumentative or say controversial things it really is a surprise to me the web client argument, I do feel I am very active in plex had never ever heard anything to do with separate liciences etc

If the business decision has been to make this a separate lic so be it and your prerogative which I respect but as a winc client server site what is ca going to do in supporting this then within our existing license. What happens when visual studio 2005 goes bye bye as it already requires a downgrade, or find it on eBay, my plex site will want to know now when a current version of visual studio is gong to be supported for c++ compiles. Plex is advertised to support client server with one license which arguably without visual studio upgrade it does not and the only other option of client server is to buy a new generator which will be a hard sell as it was thought that plex out of the box helped you go client server. In honesty going to managemt and saying we require new licenses there could be a feeling well why don't we simply take this opportunity to buy new liciences for a new tool then.

How about existing customers get the generator but new customers must buy it. How about the import webservices being separate as they are a much needed addin but when a product says supports client server it is not controversial to reasonablly think they are a paid for addin, and therefore protecting websydian transacxml patterns etc. It is entirely reasonable to see the webservice import as a paid for addin.

If you were to buy plex today for a site then really could you say you can create client server applications with only one licience. With a small amount of investigation it would soon become clear that this state of the art tool was generating dll and active x in 2012. I am on te record for stating at my current assignment the greatest risk facing them is the c++ clients and visual studio 2005 and vbscript architecture and had begun to look migration to wpf at considerable cost but would now have to say we need to buy further liciences, then what are the original plex liciences for could be a reply, half a client server, the original plex liciences is for the rpg generator.

Quite a quandary and most likely a situation faced by many.

Regards
George

[George Jeffcock]

With the interest of genuiely wanting to hear both sides of the story it would not matter a jot to me if it required 2 or 4 or 8 generators to create RPG back end and WPF front end as long as the total Plex cost was less than another tool to do the same. Would you have that sort of info avaliable which would placate others.

[Anon Anon]

Technically speaking perhaps the web client isn’t necessarily a good comparison in this case.

Let me try and simplify it in these terms….the EJB generator costs extra; running a Plex application and run it in an enterprise J2EE environment. Somewhat similar, to run a Plex application in an enterprise .NET environment costs a little more (by the way the new “rumors” that we’ve priced this at $10K per seat are amusing. It is not nearly that much. Why people feel the need to spread rumors rather than just contact me directly is beyond me).
When all is said and done this is the bottom line…..there is simply no tool on the market that provides as many rich (and free) features as Plex. What happened here is that the user community simply assumed it would be a free feature. We shouldn’t go into anything assuming it’s going to be free of course. Maybe sometimes we forget that Plex is a business, and a business needs revenue no matter what the source is to keep the product going strong. That is all. We aren’t talking highway robbery here.

Again, I stand by this – no other tool has as many dynamic, complimentary capabilities in its base….than Plex. No other tool provides more bang for the buck….than Plex. No other tool has stood the test of time through ongoing technology transformations…..than Plex (well, 2E also). We simply cannot assume that we are just going to keep giving away the farm for free! Ask yourself this….what vendor wouldn’t charge extra for this? What product wouldn’t charge extra for something like this?

Now I do take the blame for maybe not communicating this as frequently up front as I could have. I am not nearly the communicator that I used to be unfortunately. Part of that is the fact that I am responsible for many products at CA now…I am not only Plex/2E like I was for years. Another part of it has been my personal health situation and ongoing battle there. I am not trying to make excuses…I am just saying it’s a lesson learned and something I need to look at myself about maybe doing differently if this ever came up again in the future. And these are things that unfortunately affect me and the way I do things sometimes.

Again….thanks all for your ongoing advocacy of Plex. We wouldn’t have such a strong tool if it weren’t for a great user community like yourselves. I hope this good thing will keep going for many years to come . We’ve already been at CA for 12 years now….and we’ve just launched a fantastic new release. Would you have thought that possible back in 2000?

Thanks all for your patience and understanding….and know that you can come to me for questions and/or to share your thoughts.

Bill

[George Jeffcock]

Thank you for the measured reply Bill.

With all your points understood and actually agree with the economic reasoning as I previously pointed out. It would seem this is water shed release for Plex.

With time comes change and today's tech needs are different from yester year so it is clear that Plex now has a basket of products that you can pick and mix to solve your various needs and budgets.

Existing customers see plex from the client server perspective and bought plex for 5250/C++ front end and Rpg DDS /winnt sql server back end. The vast majority see and bought plex for this client server product. Which is not available now in the current licence arrangement as no one of right mind would create a front end in 2012 using visual studio 2005, with the aim of creating dll and panels in c++ EDITED: Well you could go down the java client route thou must say got burnt on that generator before with another client.

So all the new sales potentially need to be sold the basket and not the original client server, where and how is this going to be marketed, can country partners be expected shift the plex message alone with out central funding and campaign management to sell the 'new' basket of products from plex to solve all your IT needs. My point is if there is no central push and budget it can reasonably suggested there was no primary intention to sell this new basket of products to new customers but to slowly move existing client server clients onto WPF and generate/force revenue this way which is kinda how do i put it, a step backwards. With no answer to my question on visual studio 2005 I take it there are no plans to change this for C++ generation which means Plex sites sooner or latter must look at new front end solutions which WPF is one but it would make it much more palatable let alone easier to advocate if many, many, many new sites are also using the tech but if it is the same old customers, users, people having to move to a paid wpf generator then in my opinion and recommendation is to take the opportunity to move away from Plex. But if there is a buzz about the product on non user forumns and no ca websites, evidence of plenty of new sites (we will know when this is as there would be a flood of agents calling and flood of newbie questions on the forumns etc) then it would be easier to recommend to stick with plex a little while longer.

This why I was checking google for plex 7.0 release info, to find evidence to support a change of marketing approach, again the partners can't be expected to do this can they? To get to the new customers ie new revenue CA must invest in marketing of this tool, the partners can't be expected to do this on their own budget can they? If I contacted Desynit in UK and Aper in Sweden then I can tell you I will get a different Plex message, partners can't be expected to co-ordinate marketing can they?

I did note the CA Plex home screen said 6.1 and it still does.

I understand about pricing and agree, if i have a query i would contact you, simple, i have not made any assumptions on price as I do assume a deal can always be struck and hence I would suggest the policy of not publishing a price list.

Regards
George Jeffcock

[Anon Anon]

Bill,

Where is the pricing structure available for the new licensing options?

[Anon Anon]

Apologies for the slow response.

Please contact me directly via email on matters regarding pricing. Pricing lists and tables are not something I am allowed to post publcly on a message forum.

I can be reached at [e-mail]

[Anon Anon]

Hi, Bill

I’d like to get some info about the new pricing lists

Thanks and best regards

Manuel

From: CA PLEX CA 2E Global User Community
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 7:06 PM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: [?? Probable Spam] [CA Plex General Discussion] RE: Licensing the CA Plex 7.0 .NET Client Generator

Apologies for the slow response.

Please contact me directly via email on matters regarding pricing. Pricing lists and tables are not something I am allowed to post publcly on a message forum.

I can be reached at [e-mail]
Posted by:bill.hunt
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[Anon Anon]

Hello all,

It is indeed true that commercial realities cannot be ignored, whether it be by CA or by companies who use CA Plex for software development.

With this in mind I am disapointed that the commercial process of sales and marketing has not been employed in trumpeting the launch of CA Plex 7.0.

Last June, just after I returned from the 2E/Plex conference in Chicago, I pondered the challenges faced by CA in selling CA Plex 7.0 to the world, and the challenges faced by existing Plex users in building a business case to fund a move from Plex WinC to Plex C#/WPF generator.

http://www.desynit.com/News/Blog/tabid/93/PostID/24/Trading-up-to-Plex-WPF.aspx

The response was a thundering silence!

If members of the community considering WPF client adoption could share their aspirations and pains, it will be to the benefit of all. I am aware of one customer of CA Plex for whom the new generator will free them them from some painful problems, but they are going to need to invest heavily in upgrading and re-platforming. For them, the benefits are worth the effort.

When it comes to attracting new customers to CA Plex, the quality of the tool is secondary to the quality of the marketing effort to sell, sell, sell. I compliment highly the work done by the team at CA on the Plex 7.0 release. It is not just the new generator, there is plenty more which is included in the standard product suite.

We have one half of the equation, will we now see the sales and marketing machine support all of the technical investment in order to help customers achive an ROI? And indeed for CA themselves to achive an ROI, and the benefits for all which go along with that.

[Anon Anon]

Hi Bill,

Does the Multiplatform license, include the .NET Client?

Is there any tutorial specifically to this new generator?

Thanks,
Hugo

[Anon Anon]

Hi Bill,

Does the Multiplatform license, include the .NET Client?

Is there any tutorial specifically to this new generator?

Thanks,
Hugo