{"id":1492,"date":"2013-08-21T11:44:01","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T23:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/?p=1492"},"modified":"2013-08-21T17:19:52","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T05:19:52","slug":"are-embarcadero-really-interested-in-new-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/1492\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Embarcadero Really Interested in New Users ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes]<\/span><\/span><p>In replying to a comment on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tpersistent.com\/?p=843\">his blog post<\/a> about the pricing of the mobile add-on pack (XE4 &#8211; no news on XE5 as yet that I am aware of), Larry Hengen appears to be one of those people still under the belief that there are any &#8220;new buyer&#8221; type customers for Delphi.  Are there ?  Really ?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It seems to me, even if the wider evidence were not enough (same old &#8211; increasingly old &#8211; faces at the annual product launch) that the product management and pricing direction of Delphi in the past 2-3 years is strongly indicative that Embarcadero are working to extract while they can the maximum $ from a user base that is, if not dwindling, then is certainly not expanding at a useful rate.<\/p>\n<p>Not least this is writ large in their multi-platform strategy that emphasises the preservation of existing code (given a white-wash of &#8220;Native&#8221; marketing labels to make it more palatable).<\/p>\n<p>Their pricing and release strategies appear geared toward leveraging maximum dollar from <strong>existing<\/strong> customers, but to any prospective new customer must convey an uncomfortable sense of insecurity, given that it includes but is not limited to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>attempts to restrict usage permitted under current license terms with changes to those terms along with slapping on extra &#8220;Add-on&#8221; packs to permit such usage in the future (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/?p=1097\">Pro EULA changes<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>bait-and-switch of features (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/?p=1403\">now you have it, now you don&#8217;t and must pay more for it, iOS support)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>the tightening of upgrade eligibility criteria<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t seem to me that a prospective new user is going to feel warm and fuzzy about the prospect of being a customer of a company with such a track record.<\/p>\n<p>The final exhibit is the lip service paid to the needs of new users.<\/p>\n<p>There is no coherent set of Trial products.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of being able to simply trial the actual product they are interested in (unless it is Architect SKU) a prospective customer has to download and install the behemoth that is the Architect SKU and then trawl through the feature matrix to find out what features in their &#8220;trial&#8221; will actually be in the product they will buy.<\/p>\n<p>Then of course there is the so-called &#8220;Starter&#8221; edition, completely lacking the one, critical learning tool for any new user &#8211; the VCL source.  The Starter Edition is such a begrudging token gesture that I am surprised that it has survived even this long.  More lip service I suspect.<\/p>\n<p>The point being that <strong>none<\/strong> of this speaks to a healthy influx of new users.  <strong>All<\/strong> of it suggests a desperate need to squeeze, cajole and extort as much revenue from a locked in user base as possible before those users also finally dig their way out of the hole.<\/p>\n<p>But then this could all just be a bafflingly poor strategy by Embarcadero.  Perhaps there are new users, despite Embarcadero&#8217;s best efforts to put them off.<\/p>\n<p>Are there ?  Does anybody know of any genuine new users of Delphi ?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t mean existing customers adding one or two licenses (or more).  I mean genuine, first time, all new, never-done-it-before Delphi customers ?<\/p>\n<p>Answers on a postcard please.  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes]<\/span><\/span>In replying to a comment on his blog post about the pricing of the mobile add-on pack (XE4 &#8211; no news on XE5 as yet that I am aware of), Larry Hengen appears to be one of those people still under the belief that there are any &#8220;new buyer&#8221; type customers for Delphi. Are there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[292,119,176],"class_list":["post-1492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-delphi","tag-delphi","tag-embarcadero","tag-pricing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1TKYv-o4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1492"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1502,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1492\/revisions\/1502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}