I've always had a problem paying lots of money for software, which is odd when you think about it. I'll happily pay for hardware, or to see a movie or to listen to a CD. In fact, the only software I think I pay without much hesitation is a computer game.
Out of the twenty or so apps I've downloaded onto my iPhone the only paid one is the very successful game Flight Control which cost me the princely sum of $1.19.
So at Oracle I was working with a sales rep who was trying to land a $10m deal with a large australian multinational company for a global license I was surpised, given that this account made up about one third of his territory, that he was chasing a deal that would probably limit what he could sell in future years.
We had a discussion about what software was worth and it was illuminating to me. As he pointed out - to him the software was worth the cost of the CD - a few cents and nothing more.
The funny thing is that a few years earlier I worked for a mainframe software house who when the annual results we're due and the numbers looked bad had a dodgy practice of cutting a few tapes bunging them in a storage cupboard and reporting the software as millions worth of assets. (They were later censured by the Stock Exchange for this practice).
I guess the old marketing saying is true - something is only worth what somebody else is prepared to pay for it.
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