"The increased value justifies the additional expense... when you make comparisons between SAP and Oracle and SAP and Microsoft, our offering has significantly more value."

Yes. And when you make comparisons between SAP and MySQL and between SAP and PostgreSQL, you realise just how little value that is.

Smacks of profiteering, much like Microsoft with it's no upgrades move a couple of years back, and a couple of other software houses I used regularly who charge you for a minimum of 5 days consultancy at £1000 a day even though the software takes 5 minutes to install. Money for old rope.

I just had a letter from Avaya, who are obviously short of cash. They have recently sent out letters to all their customers who have, and suppliers who maintain, Lucent Index phone systems (a LOT of people) telling them that as of May 2009 their phone system will no longer be supported. Most of the maintainence suppliers are doing the same thing (they won't allow the logic boards to be re-licenced thus if your phone system dies you're screwed).

We're already potentially looking at a £300,000 cost to replace, and that's just us. Think of all the other companies who are in the same boat.

Just means we won't buy Avaya for our new phone system. Mitel? I hear you knocking....

Not the one and only Bill "Ja" Wohl?

I thought this [from a SAP stalwart] was a little paranoid .....

<<< Dear Sir/Madam,

I am sorry to inform you that we have blocked the mail you sent us recently. In order for us to protect ourselves from viruses and spam, we have to take these measurements because your mail address is not listed in our files.

If you reply this message without editing, it will automatically be released to the addressee in the message. Your mail address is then automatically registered and in the future the addressee will receive your mail directly.

If you do not reply, the message will be automatically deleted after 5 days.>>>>

...... and it wasn't helped by the fact that even then it still didn't do what it said on the tin.

Needless to say, it just proved their needs to be no match to my own.

Strange, I don't know a great deal about SAP but I was under the impression it was a tad more than just an RDBMS. Either way, I'll stick to the Post-It notes, works for me...

"I don't know a great deal about SAP but I was under the impression it was a tad more than just an RDBMS"

It depends on your point of view. SAP can use Oracle and MSSQL as the DB engine so you could say that it is not actually a RDBMS. It does allow you to tie in all of the different aspects of a business that previously required different software packages which is why it's generally referred to as ERP software.

The point that AJ was making (I think) was that the comment from SAP was nonsense - "comparisons between SAP and Oracle and SAP and Microsoft" - it's bit like comparing a kick in the nuts and a punch in the eye to a kick in the nuts and a punch on the nose.

@ amanfrommars

You use SAP!?

NOW, I begin to understand......

Go with Asterisk, hardware SIP phones (Grandstream if you are on a budget, Zultys if someone else is paying) and get an ISDN card with a GPL-ed driver (such as one of the Digium ones). And then you'll never, ever have to worry about manufacturer-enforced obsolescence again.

In the meantime, write to your elected representative and request a new law to push IP into the Public Domain in the circumstances you describe, in order that nobody can be held to ransom in such a fashion. (You could point out that it's creating e-waste for no good reason, but it seems that the government don't actually want to *prevent* anyone from polluting: they just want to make them pay for it, to the point where "not throwing things away" is tantamount to tax evasion.)