AEP -Microsoft renewal

pashya1972

Microsoft has stopped supporting version 4.0 and prior under AEP renewal plan scheme. AEP provides support for upgradation, hotfixes, use of customersource etc.
Now there are lot of customers using Nav 4.0 or prior. My question is whether it is advisable to renew AEP plan? if Microsoft is not going to support for earlier versions then what will be the benefits of renewing AEP? .If yes what are those and further if anyone want to upgrade to newer version say 2009 after 1 or 2 year or later on wish to renew AEP whether the fees will be higher>

Pls express ur expert views

regards,
prashant

themave

If you don't pay the fee, and later you want to upgrade, you have to pay all back fees and a penalty. so if you think you are going to upgrade, it is better to pay the fee. and not get hit with a penalty later.

Now, is the fee worth it, that is a whole separate question, of which I feel it is not, but my company has a policy of being on maintenance, so we pay it, and get no benefit, since we have been using Navision for 10 plus years, all the new training they offer is not really a benefit to us.

Alex_Chow

http://mibuso.com/blogs/alexchow/2010/02/17/be-current-or-not-current-on-the-microsoft-annual-enhancement-plan/

themave

Alex Chow wrote:

http://mibuso.com/blogs/alexchow/2010/02/17/be-current-or-not-current-on-the-microsoft-annual-enhancement-plan/

I would add a third item to your post. You could weigh the potential for growth, and if you think you may grow down the road, or you may want to use a few modules you are not using now. You could take your 6.25 years of maintenance fees, and use that amount to purchase additional user licenses and modules. With the new BRL license, you already are getting nearly all the modules anyways.

Because, like your other blog post on upgrading states, it is not something that should be taken lightly. And as any end user can tell you, it is not cheap, paying for maintenance doesn't not get you a free upgrade, it just gets you the right to upgrade, you still have to pay your solution center to do the upgrade. So if you are going to want to upgrade down the road, you could instead just pay your programmer to program a similar functon into your current installation. A good solution center can extend a current version of Navision very easily.

Alex_Chow

themave wrote:

Alex Chow wrote:

http://mibuso.com/blogs/alexchow/2010/02/17/be-current-or-not-current-on-the-microsoft-annual-enhancement-plan/

I would add a third item to your post. You could weigh the potential for growth, and if you think you may grow down the road, or you may want to use a few modules you are not using now. You could take your 6.25 years of maintenance fees, and use that amount to purchase additional user licenses and modules. With the new BRL license, you already are getting nearly all the modules anyways.

Because, like your other blog post on upgrading states, it is not something that should be taken lightly. And as any end user can tell you, it is not cheap, paying for maintenance doesn't not get you a free upgrade, it just gets you the right to upgrade, you still have to pay your solution center to do the upgrade. So if you are going to want to upgrade down the road, you could instead just pay your programmer to program a similar functon into your current installation. A good solution center can extend a current version of Navision very easily.

You forgot to take into consideration of executable upgrades. With the release of Vista and Windows 7, versions older than 4.0SP3 will not run, so you need to use the newer clients. And doing executable upgrade does not require your solution center.

In addition, the newer executable offers new functionalities even if you don't do the full upgrade. i.e. Web services, NAS, Send to Word/Excel, etc.

So just paying your programmer is not going to resolve problems that are posed if you weren't on the AEP.

themave

Alex, I am giving an option for someone on it right now, so they have all that in the license. If you are new to Navision, ie just purchased it, I would pay the maintenance for the first year. Getting the bugs worked out, having an up to date system. Then do what I said, you would have web services, nas, export to excel (export to excel through automation has been available for a long time) and they would be on SQL.

True, down the road, after a few new versions of windows they may have to come up with some work arounds for compatibilities issues, for instance I have a 4.0 non service pack database, running on a virtual machine on my laptop, under windows 7, it works fine.

If you buy a few extra licenses for growth, and it turns out you are growing more, then it is very likely lost your gamble, and you have to pay the fee's plus 20%, so you are only out the 20% and if times are booming, that is a small price to pay, but if times aren't booming and you don't need the additional licenses, then you are way better off, becuase not only don't you pay the 20%, but you don't pay the maintenance fee either.

so of the most frequent posters here, are supporting 3.7 installations without problem. Heck, we have some sister companies, that are using green screen terminals from 1995. There are a lot of companies that setup a system and hardly ever change it. I don't recommend that. but still I bet a lot of your clients are on old unsupported versions, and you are able to help them just fine, I would venture to guess they are probably pretty happy with what they have.

We pay the maintanace, but I hate filling out that 22K check every year, just because of a corporate headquarter policy.

Alex_Chow

For cash flow purposes for a company, does it make sense to take that gamble? Say you don't pay $22k for your enhancement fee, then you would need to pay to get current, then pay for the additional users plus its enhancement fee. For me, it would freak me out if my cash froze up like that... But then again, I don't run a multi-million dollar company so it may be $30k to $50k is not that big of a deal.

themave

Alex Chow wrote:

For cash flow purposes for a company, does it make sense to take that gamble? Say you don't pay $22k for your enhancement fee, then you would need to pay to get current, then pay for the additional users plus its enhancement fee. For me, it would freak me out if my cash froze up like that... But then again, I don't run a multi-million dollar company so it may be $30k to $50k is not that big of a deal.

Sadly that is big business, we are a small part of a Fortune 100 company, their policy is keep current on maintenance. so we write a check for $22,000 every year, for something we don't ever take advantage of.

But, for cash flow, if say 3 years into it, you need the maintenance, because times are booming and you need licenses. then coming up with 22 * 3 * 1.2 = 79.2K is not really much harder then paying 22K each year when times are tough. You are always only coming up with the incremental additional cost, you would have had to pay the 22, so you only need to come up with the additional 57.2k the penalty portion above is only 13.2k, if you are going to by paying 4K for each BRL advance license, and say you need 10 of them, then the 13.2 penalty only adds 1.32k per license, If times are really good and you need 20 licenses, then it is only less then $700 penalty per license, which is only 18% on a per license basis.

I personally see where maintenance can be a very smart thing to pay, especially if you have a lightly modified or even better un-modified database. Upgrades are much easier and you could easily take advantage of the latest and greatest

Alex_Chow

If we can make the assumption that your business will grow and you will need licenses in the 5 year period, it does make sense to stay current, not just for upgrading purpose.

Why pay penalty when you don't have to?

The magic number is 5 years.