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LabVIEW subscription model for 2022

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"Even if you adjust the price in 2021 for inflation it still wouldn’t be a significant enough difference to the current subscription price to warrant anyone being prompted to buy a subscription anymore. That’s most likely the main reason why NI only sort of reintroduced the perpetual license. They really have no good idea about how to resolve that pricing dilemma. "

That's my resolution to the pricing dilemma. Adjust for inflation, granted. Drop the subscription price. The people that paid into it at the higher price already spent their money. They'll keep subscription at a discount or get perpetual, but they won't drop labVIEW; they've already demonstrated their willingness to pay the subscription.
Everyone else frozen on 2021/2022 will at least consider upgrading instead of looking for a way out.
The people that are in the middle of jumping ship, and maybe some who already have, will reconsider. With a premium over the current subscription my guess is they will stay on their course to transition away (or at least a lot of them will) rather than pay a higher price. They've already left; making the product  (significantly) more expensive isn't going to entice them back. 

My 2 cents. It ain't much. 🙂

 

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Message 921 of 1,049
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My solution would be to drop the subscription option altogether. Current NI leadership could say that SaaS was a poor decision by the old regime and now that the company is under new management (Emerson) we ware going back to perpetual licenses with the option of SSP and use the old pricing model (adjusted for inflation). That would get me back on board and upgrade.

Message 922 of 1,049
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the most challenging at this point is to regain trust from customers, that jumped out of the wagon after Subscription model. 

I believe many are waiting to see what happens as the dust settles down. 

Message 923 of 1,049
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I appreciate all the suggestions and feedback and we understand the points raised.

 

Regarding announcing the prices and discounts, as explained before, our intent is to fix the pricing & packaging issues introduced when we introduced the subscription model back in 2022.

 

Reenabling perpetual licenses as an option back in April was intended to be a stopgap until we fix the pricing & packaging so announcing prices and discounts doesn't make sense if it's just a temporary measure. Again, we're using the learning from that temporary measure to make reasonable options to our customers. 

 

We ask for your patience for a little longer to get this resolved.

Ahmed Eisawy | Director of Test Software Commercialization | +1 (503) 453-9178 | ni.com
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Message 924 of 1,049
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@AhmedEisawy  a écrit :
...

We ask for your patience for a little longer to get this resolved.


So it is urgent to wait before ordering...

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Message 925 of 1,049
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Ugh. Just set the bloody price at what it used to be before this nonsense and start taking in money that everyone would be glad to pay.

 

They can't. Then they will have no work as they will become obsolete.

PS. Like the tax and the government with their 2 buttons: "tax" and "financial support". Any monkey can work with 2 buttons, looking at modern countries.

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Message 926 of 1,049
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tl;dr / my2ct


Preamble: I don't envy you your current job. I wouldn't like to change with Emerson in this mess.


The bad decisions made by "the old NI team" have caused enormous damage to your reputation. Effective relationships and trust, some of which had been built up over 30 years, have been wiped out. I don't want to have to quantify the price of this forced experiment with the customer base for NI ?  But I bet it will be 8-9 digits? Future will tell.

 

As I have written here in 2022, we were one of the small engineering firms that helped to introduce NI tools to industry in various sectors over 25 years and helped to establish NI/Labview in many laboratories starting at CERN.  We did this with respective  leverage in training junior staff in-house and at the end customer. It was often necessary to support NI's technical sales team directly with potential projects at the end customer's premises to realize a deal -and open the door-  for NI (and of course for us as well).

No problem: live and let live.

 

We also have helped NI stakholders since 2000 to define requirements e.g. for NI's sound and vibration tools and software frameworks which could scale for large projects. This was before Labview was ready for this. Some NI folks even smiled at ideas like order tracking, qp-frameworks (Samek) and message based actor frameworks. "There is no market for such complex stuff ..." 😉

 

In 2011, I first realized first time the existential danger of the "single vendor lock in" we were in, and hoped that it couldn't get that bad. And then it got even worse 💥. I decided to retire some years early and informed my customers and partners about why and what was happening. The feedback from my customers (space, pharma, energy sector, automotive, chemical ...) is very clear: some have immediately put NI on their blacklist, but most have simply frozen NI tools and are switching to open source alternatives in the medium to long term.

 

We had interns and young engineers here who probably will no longer build their future on unreliable partnerships after this experience. In-house and with end customers. It was a good life lesson for them ;-).

 

To be clear once again: for a long time there was a basis of trust with the technical sales team here in Germany, which has now vanished into thin air. The approach: "We'll go back to the old sales model, adjust the prices a little and everything will be fine", ..., will not work.

 

I myself would not recommend NI tools again until clear, transparent, comprehensible decisions are made, honest communication takes place and the damaged former partners of NI are at least symbolically compensated for the "effort" involved in this multi year mess. I'd expect a sort of compensation for the widespread planning uncertainty by massively discounted, rather free, licenses for former "partners" and customers. Could be the cheaper move for NI in the end 🤔?

 

There are proverbs about this lesson in many cultures:
Here in Germany, the saying goes: "It often takes years to build trust;
It only takes seconds to destroy it." Willy Meurer (1934 - 2018)

 

Nevertheless, I am taking a close look at the developments here. Emerson must now do a very good job. NI / Emerson will certainly not get a second chance with many disgruntled "partners".

 

I myself am only a small company - and today probably irrelevant for NI - but I also know larger and big ones. And THEY see things very similarly.

 

People are not stupid and hate being locked into dependencies.

 

My2ct.

 

Being a swiss knife for half a century...
Message 927 of 1,049
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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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Message 928 of 1,049
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I understand that there are problems at reducing the price.... But guys, it is not quantum physics...

Time is not on your side.

15K is way out of limits for us. Not to mention that LabVIEW is not evolving much, anymore.

You expect someone to pay too much, for providing too little.

Message 929 of 1,049
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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. 


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.

---

25+ years long fan of LabVIEW. Move to Emerson looks to be for the better! See the last posts in subscription model thread.
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Message 930 of 1,049
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