Cost/benefits upgrading to wildfire.

Hi all,

lately at work the discussion has rised, if we should continue our
maintanance contract any further... We pay tons on maintanance contracts to
get a software update of 2001 and a helpdesk we never used in all those
years.

Wildfire does'nt prove to have the extra functionnality that would motivate
Workstation upgrade.

So if we wo'nt use wildfire for the first couple of years, why should we
pay tons for the maintanace contract?

Is'nt it much cheaper to drop the maintanace contract, and accuire new
licences in a year or 3? meanwhile, the workstations have evolved, and
wildfire will be tweaked and finetuned?

did anyone else had this discussion at work? I know few of the customers of
my previous employer did drop the contract. and will continue for a few
years with 2001.

comments please!

thanks in advance,
Ed

 

if your maintenance fee is say 25% (which may be high) than you would have to
wait 4 years just to break even if you were to buy new license. My guess is
that you might be better off trying to discontinue maintenance for a year or so
and than trying to renew them. The worst thing that can happen is that you pay
the back support. With any smarts, my guess is that you can reduce that total
to just the current years fees. If not, switch to solidworks or something else.

so you say your not using your support ? why not, I've been using pro since
release 11 and I'm always opening web calls for questions that I have. Web
calls are the way to go. PTC usually calls back within an hour or two. If you
need immediate assistance than call the help line and wait on speaker phone.

 

We have been off maintenance for a couple years. We are currently on
2000i2 and doing fine. We do have 2001 but have so far decided not to
implement it. When we did have maintenance, it seemed that RAND solved
very few of our problems.

 

Again,

I still wonder why pay? How am I supposed to explain to my chief that
we will pay thousands of euro's a year for a release an support we
won't be using.
Rand has'nt been that much of a help either.

I've noticed that i still can manage the floating licence ( where the
maintenance is discontinued for a couple of years.) via the ptc
website to change the hardware adress for example. is this still
possible if I discontinue them all?


Thanks In advance ,
Ed

 

<snip>

PTC sends out

If the software weren't that "buggy" they don't need that many patches
:"))
Just my 2 cents!

Chinh Pham

 

: <snip>
: >
: If the software weren't that "buggy" they don't need that many patches
: :"))
: Just my 2 cents!
:
: Chinh Pham

You'll never get an argument from Pro/e users on that!!!! JM2C2! DJ

 

Ed,

Indeed within the company I work for we have a similar discussion. Although
we do continue our maintenance contracts we do not see a direct need to
upgrade to Wildfire immediately (currently running 2001).

Although PTC claims an efficiency improvement of ±24% when modeling in
Wildfire, we and others measure a system performance decrease of ± 10%. Also
the stability of the software and investments in upgrade trainings and
hardware are important factors that drive our decision. Can anyone share his
view on this decision making process?

Thanks in advance,
Patrick