I'm looking for details on application and user licensing and
what the rules are for running the Baan application (B40c3)
after a support contract expires.

We are looking into what data we would like to retain for audit sake and due to the magnitude of this effort we are
also looking into the feasability of moving Baan/Oracle from Unix to a Windows 2000 machine.

The Windows 2000 machine is currently our license server. We would be looking to move the application and data here.

The hope is that we could retain an instance of the Baan application and dataset for occasional lookup (by a minimal
# of users) for a period of 2 to 7 years. This would allow us to maintain the integrity of the data without having to
recreate many queries outside of the application.

The concern is that it may be hard internally to get approval for support of a system that is merely for audit/lookup
and not in use for new transactions. As a result, we would like to make sure that we have all the facts available up
front before we present this option to senior managment.

The questions we need to answer are:
If we have a license do we need a Baan support
agreement to legally run the application ?
- note: the application is intended for use as a
query/reporting tool only as all transactions are
to be entered in our 'other' systems

Is there a minimum amount of users who can use the
application without Baan support ?

Is licensing the same if running DEMs versus not
running DEMs ? We do not anticipate a need for DEMs
in the future.

I will be reviewing other 'licensing posts' and the QG1819 quick guide, but any feedback would be appreciated.

Regards,

BaanTech

We are in a similar situation. We do not want to renew the support agreement as we are phasing out Baan. Baan so far has refused to validate our request for an additional server addition to the pool of server without support contract.

Discussions are still on with BaaN in this regard. Our argument (understanding) is that licensing and support are two separate issues and should not be mixed.

I will also like to get feedback from others who are (or were) in similar situation.

Regards

It will certainly be interesting to hear the eventual outcome of this issue.

I wonder just how much support is required and in actuality is delivered for implementations after the initial learning (and debugging) phase. For example our system is very stable after 5 years running and we need almost no support (except relicensing after hardware upgrades) yet we pay a very high support cost.

I can see Baan's point of view though. You enter into a contract when you initially install and they are entitled to see that you stick to it. (It is analogous to the police cameras where I live issuing speeding tickets and the politicians saying it is for road safety reasons and not the enormous revenue that they collect. We know they want the $$ because they put cameras in tricky positions so as to maximize revenue rather than maximize safety)

If you need only one or two users to access the system then negotiate for support renewallfor only this many. I know of a very large implementation that did this when they decided to move most functionality to SSA quickly but take a few years to move manufacturing over.

Terry