Licensing and evaluation
Perpetual licensing tiered by processor class, and an evaluation that converts without reinstallation.
Xi products are licensed perpetually. You buy the licence once and it does not expire.
That is now unusual. Most of the alternatives in both markets are sold by annual subscription, and several of the best-known scheduling products have changed owner in recent years - which is when renewal terms tend to be revisited. A perpetual licence is not subject to that.
How licensing works
Perpetual
The licence does not expire and does not require renewal to keep running.
Tiered by processor class
Pricing follows the capacity of the machine the product runs on, mapped into classes. A small server costs less than a large one.
Quantity discounts
Available for multiple systems, so an estate costs less per machine than a single one.
Site licences
Available where that suits better than counting machines.
Secondary licensing
Development and test environments are priced separately and flexibly. You should not be paying production rates to run a test system.
Platform moves are free within a class
Move an installation from one platform to another and, provided the processor class does not change, there is no additional licence fee. We supply the installation codes for the move.
Free platform moves within a class are what make a migration - off HP-UX, Solaris or AIX - a technical exercise rather than a commercial negotiation. In a grid of six points that one is easy to skim past, and it is usually the one that decides a migration budget.
Maintenance and support
Maintenance is a separate annual contract, and optional, though we would recommend it. It covers telephone and email support, fixes and workarounds, new releases including new functionality, and emergency re-validation of licence codes outside office hours.
24x7 support is available, and what your contract includes is agreed with you.
More about support and services
Evaluation
Evaluation copies are available on request, and convert to licensed status without reinstallation.
That matters more than it sounds. When you decide to buy, there is no second installation, no rebuild, no re-testing and no cut-over. The system you evaluated is the system you run.
Evaluations install in minutes, make no kernel modifications, need no relational database, and do not interfere with your existing scheduling or printing - so you can run them alongside what you have.
To request one, tell us which product, the operating system and release you will evaluate on, and roughly what you need it to do.
Pricing
We quote rather than publish a price list, because pricing depends on the processor class, the number of systems and the licensing structure that fits your organisation.
Tell us what you are running and we will give you a figure.