On my Q3 research agenda is a document reviewing typical BI software pricing configurations. Unfortunately, I find that just asking vendors whether they have this or that pricing policy (by number of named users, number of concurrent users, server type, etc.) usually just gets me “Yes, we have it all” or “It depends” answers. Not really useful. So this time I plan to nail down the vendors to three specific quotes given three very specific configurations. Here’s my first cut at the RFQ. I plan to send it out to:

 

Small business

Medium-size business

Enterprise

Functionality: reporting, querying, dashboards, OLAP

All

All

All

Revenues

$50 million

$500 million

$10 billion

Administrators

1

2

5

Database administrators

1

3

10

Developers

2

5

20

Power users/BI content authors

5

20

100

Users who interact with reports

10

50

200

Users who only view reports

50

100

500

External users (customers/partners) who only view reports

0

100

1,000 (concurrent)

Report scheduling and distribution

No

Yes

Yes

Connectivity to DBMS and ERP sources 2 DBMS sources  2 DBMS 1 ERP source 3 DBMS 2 ERP sources

Server CPUs (cores or sockets)

4

8

32

Server clock speed

TBD

TBD

TBD

Server OS

Windows

Unix

Unix

Environments: development, testing,
UAT/QA, production, disaster recovery

D, T, P

D, T, P, DR

D, T, U, P, DR

Number of departments

2

3

5

Number of projects/applications

5

10

20

Minimum basic/starter training for developers, administrators and power users      

Initial software license price?

Annual maintenance, which should include all technical support, bug fixes and upgrades

 %

Term in years?

 X

If financed, monthly/yearly price?

 $

If SaaS, monthly/yearly price?

 $

If you offer other products (hardware, ERP applications, etc) do bundle it with BI and if yes, do you offer discounts and/or BI credits for other products % discount, $ value credits, etc for $500K in other purchases % discount, $ value credits, etc for $2M in other purchases % discount, $ value credits, etc for $10M in other purchases

 What am I missing in the RFQ? Any other gotchas I should watch out for?