LabVIEW subscription model for 2022

[AhmedEisawy]

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@beuvink wrote:

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@antonioatn wrote:

I got quoted 15k€ for the perpetual license of the professional package. That is 8k€ mor than what we paid for the 2020 license + 2 years of service. 

Thats what made it for me. 

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Thanks for sharing. @emerson: when this is the price increment to be expected, with the same for the SSP, that I always extended, a new LabVIEW license will be way out of reach. For my customers.

They will never ever pay me enough to enable me to buy such a license. I am currently asked by a major major firm for a support action on one of the tools I made in the past. I now given them a price, based on ‘old LabVIEW’ prices. They refused. I am too expensive. They say. So they rather go with someone that can do it ‘cheaper’ (as in they don’t know the system, don’t know the history and don’t know anything of the NI ecosystem).

Don’t give it much of a chance. But when multibillion companies start refusing people because of their hour rate.. that is driven by the cost of owning and learning LabVIEW.. I don’t give it much of a future when increasing the price to this level.

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That's not the expected price you should pay. While we refine pricing, you should request the discounted quote from our sales engineers. Please reach out to me directly if you're not getting it.

[AhmedEisawy]

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@antonioatn wrote:

Thats exactly it. For that price I prefer to stay with my old version, since LabVIEW has not evolved significantly (at least no 15k significantly).

If the price was like the old one, we will update every couple of years, but with this model management said that it is enough since:

- 15k is too much for a license without any updates. It is like 5 years of subscription. 

- Subscription is not an option since we cannot risk losing access to our code. 

So, we are stuck with the old version forever and planning the move away from LabVIEW.

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You don't have to move to subscription, if you still have your old perpetual version of LabVIEW. You can renew your SSP to get the latest version of LabVIEW. I'm waiving late fees for SSP renewals till end of September (at least). If you're interested, please reach out to our renewal specialists and request to renew your SSP.

[_Bryan]

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@AhmedEisawy wrote:

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@antonioatn wrote:

Thats exactly it. For that price I prefer to stay with my old version, since LabVIEW has not evolved significantly (at least no 15k significantly).

If the price was like the old one, we will update every couple of years, but with this model management said that it is enough since:

- 15k is too much for a license without any updates. It is like 5 years of subscription. 

- Subscription is not an option since we cannot risk losing access to our code. 

So, we are stuck with the old version forever and planning the move away from LabVIEW.

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You don't have to move to subscription, if you still have your old perpetual version of LabVIEW. You can renew your SSP to get the latest version of LabVIEW. I'm waiving late fees for SSP renewals till end of September (at least). If you're interested, please reach out to our renewal specialists and request to renew your SSP.

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So another hidden price break.  Had I known about this I would have renewed my last 2 perpetual licenses.  But as far as I know this was not an option.  Either way, I emailed the sales specials that sent my last quote to see if they could help with pricing on my last 2 licenses or forward it to someone who can.

The last official emails were to switch over your current perpetual licenses to subscriptions or don't and those were the options.  I guess I will see what happens now.

[Hooovahh]

I've been very critical of NI in the past. But I want to give them credit when they do things right. For those that are on the fence about coming back to a perpetual license, I highly encourage you to reach out.  Again I'm unsure of what I can or can't share. But our discount was so great that my boss went from saying we don't have it in the budget, to immediately approving it.  Our licenses to renew, were cheaper than the SSP price we used to pay before all this nonsense started.  This is after taking two years off, which management here has seen as a cost savings.  There also wasn't a haggle with NI.  The discount given on the first quote was good enough. There was some back and forth about adding or not adding stuff, but the main renewals were the same.

Our intentions are to update our perpetual license, update all of our systems to the newest, then evaluate our options next year.  This allows us to decide year by year if we have it in the budget and what we want to do. This gives us a voice again on if the changes NI makes from year to year are worth it.  The lies of an "ongoing dialog" were empty.  Still I suspect for many this is too little too late.  Decades of trust and faith have been ruined.  For us we have a path forward to continue, so I'm happier.  But I'm unsure how lasting the damage to the eco system will be.

[AhmedEisawy]

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@Hooovahh wrote:

I've been very critical of NI in the past. But I want to give them credit when they do things right. For those that are on the fence about coming back to a perpetual license, I highly encourage you to reach out.  Again I'm unsure of what I can or can't share. But our discount was so great that my boss went from saying we don't have it in the budget, to immediately approving it.  Our licenses to renew, were cheaper than the SSP price we used to pay before all this nonsense started.  This is after taking two years off, which management here has seen as a cost savings.  There also wasn't a haggle with NI.  The discount given on the first quote was good enough. There was some back and forth about adding or not adding stuff, but the main renewals were the same.

Our intentions are to update our perpetual license, update all of our systems to the newest, then evaluate our options next year.  This allows us to decide year by year if we have it in the budget and what we want to do. This gives us a voice again on if the changes NI makes from year to year are worth it.  The lies of an "ongoing dialog" were empty.  Still I suspect for many this is too little too late.  Decades of trust and faith have been ruined.  For us we have a path forward to continue, so I'm happier.  But I'm unsure how lasting the damage to the eco system will be.

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Thank you for sharing your experience and for sharing your feedback!

Moving forward, you can decide if you need to upgrade the version and/or get access to technical support/trainings, by simply renewing your SSP at just 25% of the perpetual price so should be much cheaper to maintain.

[Data-MetaData]

Dear Mr. Eisawy,

the NI deal is not mentioned in the company history so far.

Make it a good entry 🤝

But I found something I like:

"2002:
Emerson launches its first advertising campaign with the slogan "Emerson. Consider It Solved."

Ok, please solve this mess in a friendly and quick way.

Try to become a serious, trustworthy partner, again.
Make things attractive again. Make the tools cheap for "partners" who are certified (or not, like us, for reasons). Remember the small companies that worked a lot with the NI sales team. We were the people who understood and could handle RT, FPGA, image processing and distributed large systems. We explained things to the NI technical sales people when they got complex and/or big ... we are not the companies that bring in the big money directly. But we were the people with whom NI grew 10+x%/y 🤑.
Remember the door openers who were sometimes laughed at by their own C# team members because we used some graphical toys (back then...).

NI had started competing with its own "alliance partners" sometime around 2012? InsightCM? Spin-off of the Duke Energy project? Big money, sw frameworks, ahhhh! At the "launch event" in Munich, some of the top devs from Germany were there.
Afterwards we looked at each other and were plain kind of speechless😳. Because of the immaturity, the prices (for us, to *use* the stuff) and the nda's associated with "insightCM". And because of this obvious, raw cannibalism.
At that point, the **bleep** hit the fan and things became more and more irritating. Also NI folks bekame "unhappy". I knew about any specialist (they had some!) in Munich, saw quite some people leaving he ship early.

I loved (still kind of do) LV and built parts of my career as experimental Physicist on top of it. But I used LV just as a tool , from a fair, sometimes "expensive", SW-Supplier. ...

Would I currently recommend it for the next generation? Nope. In future? EmersonNi's descision‌😉‌!

Sry if this is post is partly "personal". Use my feedback just as an "example" providing some free feedback and express my reasonable, personl disappointment here.

The good in this mess is: You made me retire early 😎. Good "decision".

Thx.

Nevertheless, all the best for you,

and to all the co-injured and damaged
Soho's and SMB's.

EOT

[pxiCarsten]

This is a long and justifiably emotional thread.

NI and LabVIEW had a great history that created passionate and successful users. And also users that trusted NI.

I feel sad to write this, but this trust was gradually, and severely eroded starting a long time before Emerson acquired NI. 

I believe that Emerson sincerely wants to restore the success of NI and LabVIEW.

But to do this requires clear and publicly substantial actions. No more warm and fuzzy statements.

One way to do this could  be to convene a two-day in person dialogue meeting with current and former: LabVIEW users, companies, educational institutions, NI employees, alliance members…

and shortly thereafter announce concrete actions.

The current “we’re working on it, call us for a good (secret) deal” (which I also have gotten) strikes me as unprofessional, and non-committal. 

Please Emerson/NI: act decisively and demonstrate with the full force of a large, deep-pocketed corporation, timely and concrete actions that will re-energize the user base!

Restore our trust!

Carsten Thomsen

Former NI VP of Engineering 

[AhmedEisawy]

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@pxiCarsten wrote:

This is a long and justifiably emotional thread.

NI and LabVIEW had a great history that created passionate and successful users. And also users that trusted NI.

I feel sad to write this, but this trust was gradually, and severely eroded starting a long time before Emerson acquired NI. 

I believe that Emerson sincerely wants to restore the success of NI and LabVIEW.

But to do this requires clear and publicly substantial actions. No more warm and fuzzy statements.

One way to do this could  be to convene a two-day in person dialogue meeting with current and former: LabVIEW users, companies, educational institutions, NI employees, alliance members…

and shortly thereafter announce concrete actions.

The current “we’re working on it, call us for a good (secret) deal” (which I also have gotten) strikes me as unprofessional, and non-committal. 

Please Emerson/NI: act decisively and demonstrate with the full force of a large, deep-pocketed corporation, timely and concrete actions that will re-energize the user base!

Restore our trust!

Carsten Thomsen

Former NI VP of Engineering 

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Carsten, I appreciate your candid feedback. That's what we're working on and we will announce once we complete our changes internally.

[Artst]

I am the only LabVIEW programmer where I work. The LabVIEW version I am currently using there 2020. Our perpetual license does allow 2021, but I have not gotten around to using it. When NI transitioned LabVIEW to a very expensive subscription model I recommended not to do that transition for the same reasons others have not in this thread. Namely high cost, and if there is a downturn in business which makes renewal unaffordable, all the LabVIEW source code my company has invested in becomes inaccessible.

This problem is not just with LabVIEW. It used to be we would sell with our systems a PCI-5114. NI quit making them. Its successor DAQ system has a much higher cost than the PCI-5114 had. So now instead we ship PicoScopes with the systems we sell to our customers. I really can't figure why NI quit making the PCI-5114 which met the need very well. Unless perhaps it is an attempt to force their customer base to transition to a much higher cost, and higher profit, hardware.

I wait to see what happens to the published cost of LabVIEW perpetual licensing. If it makes economic sense in the future I will recommend a perpetual license renewal. Until then I will not bother with having to contact sales for a better deal. And I will not do it at the currently published price.

[AhmedEisawy]

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@Artst wrote:

I am the only LabVIEW programmer where I work. The LabVIEW version I am currently using there 2020. Our perpetual license does allow 2021, but I have not gotten around to using it. When NI transitioned LabVIEW to a very expensive subscription model I recommended not to do that transition for the same reasons others have not in this thread. Namely high cost, and if there is a downturn in business which makes renewal unaffordable, all the LabVIEW source code my company has invested in becomes inaccessible.

This problem is not just with LabVIEW. It used to be we would sell with our systems a PCI-5114. NI quit making them. Its successor DAQ system has a much higher cost than the PCI-5114 had. So now instead we ship PicoScopes with the systems we sell to our customers. I really can't figure why NI quit making the PCI-5114 which met the need very well. Unless perhaps it is an attempt to force their customer base to transition to a much higher cost, and higher profit, hardware.

I wait to see what happens to the published cost of LabVIEW perpetual licensing. If it makes economic sense in the future I will recommend a perpetual license renewal. Until then I will not bother with having to contact sales for a better deal. And I will not do it at the currently published price.

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If you want to try - or in need for - the latest versions of LabVIEW, you can renew your perpetual license SSP at a price comparable to the current subscription price. This is a promo we're starting while we're working on adjusting our pricing and packaging.

If you're interested, please reach out to NI's renewals specialists.