posted by avanabs on April 8, 2010 09:18 AM

Proprietary Closed Source Application Server Support

The major JEE Application Server vendors offer sophisticated, feature rich, products sold under vendor licenses, together with providing annual maintenance support agreements. While it may not be strictly mandatory (salesmen often tell the customer that it is…commissions on support are very high) for the customer to purchase a support agreement, virtually 100% of the customers do. Since these products are based on proprietary closed source software technology, only those with access to the vendor’s source code can provide maintenance or enhancements to the product. Given the choice of forgoing support, patches, and upgrades, or of paying for the vendor’s maintenance agreement, customers pay, and pay, and pay.

There are third parties providing consulting services and training, but anything involving the internals of the Application Server is inaccessible. Hardly surprisingly, software vendors use this leverage to their best advantage, making maintenance the most profitable portion of their businesses.

JEE Application Server Economics

The JEE Application Server vendors offer multiple levels of products with software Iicense list pricing/CPU varying from just under $5,000 to over $25,000. It is also common for these list prices to be heavily discounted during the purchase negotiations, particularly for large volume customers. Additionally, many major customers enter into Enterprise License Agreements (ELA) which provides them even more advantageous bulk pricing.

Read More