LCDS 3.0 released
LiveCycle data services 3.0 is finally available. Thanks for everyone who provided us valuable feedback and helped us improve the quality and usefulness of the product.
The major changes to this release compared to the previous (lCDS 2.6.1) are:
- Model driven development of Flex applications – Fiber and the Flash Builder Modelling plugin improves the productivity of rapidly developing web applications.
- Reliable Messaging – The client server communication just got much reliable, thus allowing application developers to focus on the application and less on their infrastructure
- Throttling – One less thing to worry about infrastructure. Clients of all kinds use your server, throttling allow administrators and developers to control the server throughput. The adaptive throttling capability
- Edge Server – For increased scalability and performance, LCDS 2.6.1 already supported NIO and RTMP(s), but LCDS had to be deployed in the DMZ, which obviously is not secure. The edge server, deployed in the DMZ, is a smart proxy that allows you to host your LCDS server in your application tier. Also, it is totally free if you have a valid license for the LCDS server.
- Load test harness: Similar to creating your unit test cases, java developers will now be able to simulate Flex clients in Java.
We have also simplified our documentation.
Download the trial or a free developer version to get started.
Hi Anil,
thank you and the complete team for this wunderfull result!
One question: Is there a free version for 1-2 CPU?
TIA!
Martin Zach
Martin Zach
November 20, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Martin, the 1 CPU version has been discontinued. However, we now offer a developer version that is free. This does not require a serial number, but as the name indicates is limited to development.
P.S: We are working on some alternatives, but they have not been confirmed yet. I will blog about it when finalize to roll it out.
Anil
November 20, 2009 at 7:58 pm
[...] Please find more details regarding the announcement on Anil Channappa (Product Manager LCDS and BlazeDS) blog at this URL http://anilchannappa.org/2009/11/20/lcds-3-0-released/ [...]
LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS) 3 Released « Sujit Reddy G – The Evangelist
November 21, 2009 at 2:03 am
Load test harness sounds interesting. I just downloaded the lcds 3.0 trial, but is there somewhere more documentation to be found than what’s included?
My questions:
- there is only a sample to test messaging. Can the tool also be used for load testing of remoting?
- can this tool also be used with BlazeDS (so that we could invest time to make some test scripts with this tool for all our flex projects, regardless whether BlazeDS or LCDS is at the back-end)?
- Is it only for NIO channels?
Thanks,
Bert Laga
Bert
December 1, 2009 at 10:07 am
Yes, the tool can be used to test remoting, but you will have to write some custom code to make it work. I have asked the folks internally to include a sample for testing Remoting. Should be available in a week.
Let me know what additional documentation can be helpful. Appreciate if you can send me an email(anilc@adobe.com)
Yes this tool will work with NIO as well as non-NIO channels.
Will this work with BlazeDS – Yes, but be aware that the load test harness is licensed to be used only with LCDS.
Anil
December 1, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Anil,
We are new to the LCDS world, its fabulous! but the lack of an entry-level pricing-license makes things really hard.
I understand LCDS license is about $40,000 and thats too much for many companies/applications.
I think many companies could benefit from what LCDS has to offer but at that price level won’t be many who could afford it .
I know blazeds effort goes in that direction but its not LCDS and go from free (blaze) up to $40k (lcds 3) is a big jump!
Hope you can clarify a little bit more about the LCDS target and what those alternatives are!
Thanks great product!
MaTT
December 2, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Thanks Matt, really appreciate your feedback.
As I mentioned in my previous comments, we are evaluating several options including hosted options that are affordable.
Would a hosted option work in your case, and if not what are some of the challenges?
btw, LCDS is not $40K, it is less expensive than that:)
Anil
December 2, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Hi Adobe,
first of all I would like to mention, that I worked since April 2009 with lcds 3 day and night. I was really excited about the product.
We planned to set up a start up compay using lcds 3.
When the final version came out, I was completey shocked about the pricing policy:
The first CPU is no longer free, the 100 concurrent version is gone as well and the full licence at 18.500€ per CPU =(x1,5108=27.950 US $)!
As the data within our is very confidential, we have to set up a seperate server for a group, with for example 50 users.
That makes 27.950$/50=559$ per user. That is more then we planned to take for our complete product!
A cheaper hosting solution would not help, as there are very strict regulations in Europe especially for financial data where the server has to be located and who has access to it.
The whole situation remindes me at the 1980ties when Apple showed their first computers. What a wunderfull product! But the price in Europe was about 500-700% more expensive then a normal PC. With a bleeding heart I bought a PC with Microsoft on it. And guess what, about 12 computers and 25 years later I am still using Windows!
I think its not enough to have a very good product to win the crowd. You have to understand the situation of your customers what is possible and what not. Ok Adobe, go with a startup company to a bank and ask for a loan for a single server with 4CPU=74.000€ =111.900$. Only for a licence for one server for the backend! The server is not paid with it.
The funny thing is, even if Adobe changes back the policy, I lost my confidence. I fear that Adobe would raise the price in the future.
I will give Adobe not a second chance to hit me like that, to take me out of the market before I even started!
ByBy Adobe LiveCyle Data Services!
A former customer
A former customer
December 3, 2009 at 4:14 am
Anil, thanks for your prompt response.
I am sorry if thats not the right price, I used the figure an Adobre representative gave me when I called yesterday
I think hosted ed could be great for a good proportion of customer but not all.
I think Hosted solutions are good if you
1) Already worked with the platform and you know you are going to get a benefit from it. (cost – simplicity)
2) Customer is keen to have information out in the cloud. Financial information out there? mmm
3) Fast Data Access whith Integration with other in-house system ERP is a must. (ever tried to link google appengine with in house data and do a simple query? slowww)
1 will be very difficult without even start using the platform, I think many hosted ed lovers started with on site appl and then moved. Can’t do this now!
Case 2 and 3 will make hosted edition unacceptable.
Flex/LCDS is a killing combination for enterprise software I still think many customers want/need their infrastructure at home (or their dc of preference)
I think you are doing an excellent job with Flex (software/price scheme/documentation) but seems LCDS does not follow that lead.
I think that an affordable LCDS will make it more successful, everybody wants data-management/push/RTMP capabilities but the price they will pay is well below your price… so you will only keep getting fortune 500 customers and someone else will eat the big cake.
See what you have done with Flash, you did have to open protocols (amf-rtmp) to keep the position in the market and still you have a distant fight against html5!
Google already has plans for push and data-management solutions, there are some others (not that good software) floating around and many more will appear… no a Hosted edition will only slow down a shift from customer looking for LCDS services to somewhere else.
Market needs your technology, if you want it in the market you will have to do better in all directions, Flash, Flex AND LCDS!.
As with the previous post we (too) have already been investing in lcds 2.6 and lcds 3 beta quite some time now and started to move forward that direction, but now it seems it will not be an option, we too feel hit by this move.
wait for your comments..
MaTT
December 3, 2009 at 8:50 am
I think adobe is a bit crazy.
The LCDS price is not difficult to understand.
Adobe wants to sell the more expensive, but the market wants a realistic price.
Andy
December 7, 2009 at 5:46 am
all companies want to maximize profit, so does Adobe, but this prices are for fortune 500 companies! and the problem for adobe is that there are only 500 of them!
I hope adobe change its pricing schemes!
MaTT
December 7, 2009 at 10:07 am
Hi Anil,
Any updates about this?
Can we expect any change about this anytime soon?
thanks
PS: Where can I see project roadmap?
MaTT
December 9, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Hi All,
I think we are hitting the wrong man. Anil is not responsible for the pricing. Unfortunately the man who is responsible for it, does not have a blog.
I do not know hor the companies calculate their projects. I know 3 very big projectes in the last 4 weeks who voted against lcds, because of the costs..
Martin Z
Martin Z
December 15, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Anil,
when can we expect BlazeDS 4 final?
As BlazeDS is a subset of lcds, it should be final as well?
Thanks for a reply!
Martin Z
Martin Z
December 15, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Martin Z,
What other technology did those project went for? mind sharing?
I did not meant to hit him, as the product manager he has to deal with all of this as well..
The product is great, we all know that (i think) but the price and price model is terrible
..
I had a chat yesterday with an adobe enterprise salesmen … actual figures is around $30000 for single CPU license and $15000 for the development environment.
The other model they have is OEM, where you can apply to become an OEM partner where you get the software and they get a share of your sales!
This last talk scared me a little, as you can see they know they have something no one else has so they take advantage of it in a old-style rip-them fashion.
There is a well known economist that calls this kind of business 1.0 (umair haque from Harvard business).
MaTT
December 15, 2009 at 12:57 pm
No comments from anil, I get so frustrated when they hide away…
For those shocked as we are, I found Weborb http://www.themidnightcoders.com/products/weborb-for-java/overview.html
it might be an option for some of you…
regards,
MaTT
December 16, 2009 at 1:05 am
Guys, really sorry I am on vacation, and could not get back sooner.
Development License: First of all you should not have to pay for development licenses. It is free. We used to charge in the past, but that has changed since LCDS 3.0. It is possible the sales person does not know about this change. See the FAQ: http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/dataservices/faq/. It’s under (What happened to the LiveCycle Data Services ES 100-Concurrent-User License?)
Anil
December 17, 2009 at 4:46 pm
The OEM model is not useful for everyone. However if you are developing a product or providing a hosting solution, this may be an option. Our OEM deals are very custom, and trust them it is not as simple as x% of your sales. I am aware of many deals where the cost is affordable. If you are an entrepreneur or a small business, you should definitely look at this option. Please note that there is a minimum pre-payment that you can deduct for future use. If any of you are interested, you should definitely talk to Garen Ingleby
Anil
December 17, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Thanks for the info Anil.
Nevertheless I think the message here was “thats not a price many is willing to pay”.
cheers
MaTT
December 17, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Matt, it depends on how you look at the product.
For e.g. we have customers who are using LCDS because they are able to recover the cost of the software very quickly. FYI: These companies have compared several options including using open source and other competitive solutions.
I agree, for certain kinds of applications that don’t have a well defined ROI, the cost may not be justified. One should compare the overall cost with BlazeDS (or other alternatives) vs. using LCDS. If there’s inst that value, then we are doing a bad job.
If you have applications that only require a small feature set offered by LCDS, try negotiating that with the sales rep or OEM – you can get a good deal.
FYI.. please note that there is a healthy debate regarding pricing internally. There are some really good arguments on both sides.
Anil
December 17, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Anil,
Thanks for sharing with us your opinions and letting us share ours.
My guess is that internally, you know LCDS is a product that can leverage huge savings when you consider the enterprise features it provides.
I think you Priced LCDS that high thinking in the savings that any big project gets from developing with it. (correct me if I am wrong).
So that pricing scheme is ok for the current market you lead (huge ROI projects), but will not let you explore new markets were projects are not huge, how will you get to small-medium business market?
are you interested in that market?
LCDS should be commoditized (is that a word?) the same way flash did.
You have 2 markets awaiting for LCDS, one that already knows that they need it (your blog readers) but are using some alternatives like blazeds/red5/weborb/ , and another market those who still doesn’t know they need LCDS, this last market is huge!!.
I think Blazeds was a warm move but not hot enough.
Opensourcing AMF and RTMP were good steps and I that showed us you indeed realize that the technology you posses will be at risk if you not give access to it. Nevertheless at date there are few strong RTMP implementations and blazeds does not implement it and it seems it will not in the near future…
Overall this is what I want you to share with us…
is LCDS going to be only for huge projects that had that enormous ROI to pay for it?
or it will became a standard?
or we do have to accept the idea that we LCDS is confined to those high ROI project, fortune 500 companies or quirky and obscure OEM deal.
Thanks again Anil for your openess.
cheers
MaTT
December 18, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Matt, thanks for the valuable feedback. These are really good questions. Unfortunately, there isn’t just one answer.
There is no doubt that we want LCDS be used as widely as possible. Bottom line, the revenues from LCDS enables us to invest and innovate.
We are looking at a variety of things to strike a balance between the free (BlazeDS) and the paid version (LCDS). For e.g. we invested significant effort to get the Spring partnership right and offer ways to use Spring and BlazeDS that never existed before. We are currently working on another compelling partnership – more details to follow.
Having said that, I and many other people are constantly funneling feedback that shape our future decisions. As I have mentioned before, we have very healthy discussions around pricing, packaging. It’s possible that we don’t have a choice that may work for you today, but I am confident that as we evolve over time we will offer more compelling choices.
Please continue providing such valuable feedback as this will help us deliver products that works for you guys.
-Anil
Anil
December 20, 2009 at 12:19 am
Great discussion going on here.
I agree wholeheartedly with Matt. I own a startup that’s been using Flex for the past 3 years. We’re getting ready to launch a commercial product this year. We’re a small company, looking to implement only 2-4 projects / year initially. I would love to use LCDS but the pricing is prohibitive. We’ll settle for GraniteDS / WebOrb.
Seems like the volume Adobe could move at a lower price would make LCDS much more profitable. Just my two cents.
Thanks for the great blog.
Joshua
January 10, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Anil, thank you for giving us a glimmer of hope that this pricing problem might be resolved. I agree with Joshua’s point about small business. We are another small software business, with small business clients.
For several years we have planned our strategy, and the customer’s strategy, around the availability of an affordable LCDS license. At the moment, the rug has been pulled out from under us at version 3 with the withdrawal of the single CPU license, because no alternative was made available before pulling the other license.
It is inconceivable to us how such a retraction could be justified before the alternative is in place. It leaves real companies like ours unable to conduct business. This is not good when economic times are what they are.
At the end of the day, LCDS is a piece of middleware, a piece of the puzzle. It is not the solution by itself, although version 3 is a fabulous tool. It still requires many other components to build a working system which also have to be bought and paid for by the customer, such as the database server, the hardware, the server’s operating system, and most importantly our custom software solution. Without it, there’s no need to bring in LCDS. Bottom line, there needs to be room in the customer’s budget for the SUM of these parts. In many small busines cases, LCDS currently eats up the entire budget, or exceeds it.
As developers, we essentially become the resellers of LCDS, and the main advocates in the field. If we spot an opportunity, we need to have the tools to capitalize on it. So the license terms also need to empower us to do what we do best, and that’s solve business problems using the correct tool.
The unparalleled success stories of Walmart, McDonalds, Microsoft, and others came by providing exceptional, and unmatched VALUE. There are countless examples of high priced products being buried in the coffin of their unopened packaging.
Another poster stated that there is enough of this technology already open, which will eventually lead to these other vendors recreating the wheel if LCDS is not competitive. This concerns me, that the battle is already being lost, because there are already enough early adopters of these alternatives to keep those projects moving forward. This will eventually erode or destroy the investment we’ve made in LCDS, should it’s future ever be in jeopardy.
A lot more could be said. Primarily, I would like to advocate the urgency of a solution. The fact that our business is “down” for lack of a way to deliver our flagship product should be taken seriously. Secondly we need to advocate the absolute necessity of an affordable license model, for the longevity of your product and ours. Thank you.
Matthew
January 12, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Here is someone’s interesting take on this subject, posted over at Ajax World Magainze: ajax.sys-con.com/node/1227812. He’s an Adobe certified Flex instructor, author, speaker, etc.
Matthew
January 12, 2010 at 4:30 pm
I forgot to address the cloud. Regarding the cloud, our customers tell us they aren’t interested due to two factors: their financial data is too confidential to store offsite, and performance suffers with offsite servers…
From the developer’s perspective, the applications require a specific Java container (i.e. JBoss), and database flavor (i.e. DB2 or SQL Server). We need superuser access to the database and server options to tune them for maximum performance. It might be a challenge for the cloud to offer this flexibility.
Once the core applications are operational, reporting and business intelligence (BI) applications follow up to complete the package (i.e. Crystal Reports, IBM Cognos, etc). These applications pull down a lot of data in order to crunch statistics on the client. Local LAN access to the database is a major performance factor in this regard.
We urge that the cloud not be the only affordable license offered. Thank you.
Matthew
January 12, 2010 at 5:33 pm
I have installed the LiveCycle Data Services ES2 v.3 for Windows, but unfortunately can’t localize the Flash Builder Application Modeler plug-in. I red instructions here http://help.adobe.com/en_US/LiveCycleDataServicesES/3.0/Installing/lcds30_install.html
they say:
The Modeler is a tool for creating and editing Adobe application modeling technology models. It consists of a set of Eclipse plug-ins in the Adobe_Application_Modeling_plugin_v100.zip file that you install into a stand-alone Flash Builder installation or an Eclipse installation that contains the Flash Builder plug-in installation.
Stand-alone Flash Builder
1.Unzip the Adobe_Application_Modeling_plugin_v100.zip file into the flash_builder_root/plugins directory. If your unzip program is set up to use folder names, unzip directly to the flash_builder_root directory.
2.Start or restart Flash Builder.
But where is this plug-in? It’s missing in the lcds installation directory.
Thank You.
Carlos
January 14, 2010 at 9:40 am
Carlos, you can download the plugin here: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=lc_app_model
Anil
January 19, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Anil –
I am not a developer, though I am a product owner (manager)for a project that uses LCDS. You should know that LCDS was one of the deciding factors for us to build our product with FLEX. Following the announcement to the license fee changes, we have already begun discussions on how to transition our integration strategy off of LCDS – but it has actually opened the discussion for how to move forward with Flex. One of the major concerns we have is whether to continue to work with the Adobe technologies at all – since there appears such little regard for existing users. If we continue to use Adobe technology, what is Adobe decides – we’re doubling license fees now or somehow decides to charge license fees for Flex etc. Part of the message you should share internally is that the impact of this decision is not limited to LCDS customers alone, but customers of all Adobe products. It is very jarring for me as a business to see such dramatic changes without a clear low-cost path. If there are ‘alternatives’ coming, they should have been presented with the announcement.
Though I have much respect for the Adobe products, this type of dramatic shift causes much concern in our organization about what dramatic shifts may still come in the future
Giora
January 22, 2010 at 6:06 am
Is there a current price list somewhere on Adobe’s site for LCDS? I looked but couldn’t find it.
Brian Lesser
January 22, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Brian, it seems to be a case of ‘if you have to ask how much it costs you probably can’t afford it’.
What a shame that Adobe is not learning any lessons from past pricing mistakes.
Stefan Richter
January 23, 2010 at 8:50 am
Hi Stefan,
Maybe, but some companies aren’t shy about telling you exactly what everything costs, even when small shops can’t afford it. For example, here’s Oracle’s price list:
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list.pdf
You’ll see the BPEL Process Manager is $60,000 per CPU on its own or $23,000/cpu as a Weblogic module. In that context (enterprise market for things like business process orchestration software) Adobe’s pricing may be competitive.
I’d like to know what the actual LiveCycle pricing model(s) is/are and what things really cost. (I’m also curious about what it costs to update ColdFusion to ES too.) I saw a mention on a blog of a list price of $30,000 but couldn’t find it on Adobe’s site. Maybe its there and I just missed it?
At those sorts of prices I probably can’t justify LCDS. (After all Oracle got here first and we own their BPEL Process Manager.)
But I need to know because we are using Flex to build custom apps at work and LCDS would help.
Maybe someone has a link I missed?
-Brian
Brian Lesser
January 23, 2010 at 10:43 am
Brian, Adobe has a policy of not disclosing the list price of our enterprise products. Also, you should know that many customers negotiate and don’t pay the list price anyway.
Anil
January 23, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Thanks Anil,
I didn’t know that.
-Brian
Brian Lesser
January 23, 2010 at 7:28 pm
We’e also a dev house dealing with small to medium sized business clients. Often these clients may have 100 staff but only 20 to 50 actually sat in front of a computer and use the systems we create for them. They’re Architects, small financial companies, solicitors, Construction companies, doctors, manufacturers etc,
Over the past 12 months we’ve had three clients come to us after reading up on LiveCycle (here I mean LcEs not just LCDS). I get the call from an excited client. They’ve been and read the pdf and start jumping up and down at the possibilities. I then have to stop them and ask if they have the £100k ready to spend (I cant bring myself to actually tell them prices of LcEs with its various modules, the number just gets too big). So I show them a bare minimum cost, they hang up the phone.
I know LcEs is aimed at the enterprise market. its just such a shame that the millions of small/medium sized companies cant take advantage. Its a game changing product I think. Something that could really change the working environment for millions of people for the better. I watch the videos on Adobe Tv and ask myself who’s going to get a change to target these systems. I wish I could, its just NEVER going to happen.
As for LCDS, well I was totally blown away. Ive had to make some really uncomfortable call’s to a number of clients that I’ve been in talks with this past year. following the lcds 3 beta program and starting to map out some 2010 strategies for a number of clients and using Cf8/lcds2.6 as an approximation of expected costs for cf9/lcds3. I was obviously always expecting to see the costs rise, but wasnt expecting it to be by orders of magnitude.
I could sell these products all day long if there was a pricing model suitable to the small medium business. So often I’m given a requirements list (of sorts) and LcEs with Lcds and flex just ticks every box. But I mention the cost and its an instant “no, tell us your next solution”. Every time.
As an example, the cost was the only reason the solution was turned down by our local health authority. And for those reading this not in the UK, Doctors surgery’s are notorious for spending squillions on their computer systems. Its almost an industry joke what you could get the nhs to pay. So, when that sector balked at the cost I knew I was on to a loser right away.
it just reminds me SO much of the old Flex 1 pricing. Hands up who here would be using Flex now if the old pricing model hadn’t changed? anyone? no??
As one of the comments earlier said about ‘the cloud’, we have the same reaction. Our clients aren’t interested. they want everything in house where they can see it and there’s no persuading them any other way.
Lastly, Im a developer. Have been for 25 years now (feeling old) and I do understand the level of investment Adobe have made with these products. The R&D, the man hours. It all needs recouping. No question. Surely though, there must be a way to get into profit with larger sales at lower cost?
well thanks for letting me say my bit.
All in all the whole LiveCycle system is outstanding. I just wish I could make use of it.
glenn williams
tinylion uk
Glenn Williams
January 24, 2010 at 6:17 am
@Glenn: The number of small businesses in America is staggering in comparison to the big guys. There are 5 million small business firms with less than 100 employees.
There are an additional 86,000 medium firms with between 100 and 500 employees.
Only 17,000 firms have more than 500 employees…
This data was compiled from the US Census.
Matthew
January 24, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I am sorry!!!
They told us 35,000$ just for one CPU???
What the hell do you think?
Sorry Adobe, that’s not affordable.
Two years I was happy to find Flex, now I am enraged about your pricing strategy.
A disappointed supporter
Knarsen
January 25, 2010 at 11:14 am
Hi,
my calculations above are wrong, the real prices are even higher: Its the very first time, that I got a written(!) offer:
In Europe 25.000€ +19% tax= 29.750€ per CPU =(41.947$)
plus 5000€ p.a. + tax = 5950€ p.a. =(8389$) maintenance per year.
So you can choose to be a dollar millionaire or you can own 20 lcds 3 licences for one year. Hmm, difficult choice for me…
A former customer
A former customer
January 26, 2010 at 3:00 am
30K+ per CPU? Are you kidding me? Glad I spent the last 2 years learning Flex
Looks like I’m heading back to Java.
Paul Meeks
January 26, 2010 at 10:46 am
@ Paul Meeks
Unfortunately I am not kidding. I have a written offer, I had to ask several times to get it.
Even the sales person mentioned in the email that the price would be to high for me.
A former customer
A former customer
January 26, 2010 at 1:13 pm
again I want to say I do fully understand the amount of work thats gone in to LiveCycle and Im not trying to have a go at the dev team, not at all. We are all fellow developers here and I’m sure that the guys and gals at the development end of Lc would love it in all our hands. I just wanted to make that plain. Im sure we all understand the difference between those who do the development and those who do the pricing.
Have any of you guys looked at more than just LCDS? Have any of you tried to design and price a Live Cycle ES 2 system? The server, the pdf creation module, the forms module, the digital signature module, all that lovely stuff? If you want to talk about huge prices go try and get quotes for all that lot. LiveCycle Enterprise Services is an amazing system. A dev’s dream back-end. Services coming out the wazoo. LCDS is just a small piece of whats possible with the whole system. But the cost. adding up the modules, it’s like 50k here, 20k there 40k for another etc etc. again per CPU. Ive been writing software for businesses for 25 years now and have never had a client that could afford it.
I understand that right now Adobe aren’t interested in my clients being able to use LCes, they are just not the demographic Adobe enterprise is aiming at. I just wish that wasnt the case. My hope is that maybe much further down the line things may change. maybe when all the R&D and development costs have been recouped and the market they are aiming at has maybe become a little saturated that the smaller and mid sized companies I deal with may start to be looked at. I hope, but I dont see it happening. I want to be wrong.
As much as I’d love LCDS to be reasonably available, being able to build system based around the full LiveCycle suite would be just amazing.
Im sure its price comparable with other vendors offerings. Though I dont actually know of anything similar. not that Im saying there isn’t any, I just mean I dont know of any others, Ive not looked into other companies equivalent systems to LCes.
It just seems such a huge shame that Adobe have this wonderfully powerful, configurable, useful, game changing software, that so few of us will ever get a chance to work against. When I think of the systems I could build with flex as a front end to the services i could create with LCes I’m just jealous.
No of this will stop me being a flex developer and strong advocate, neither will my wish to be able to leverage LCDS and LCes and not being able to stop me doing my best to promote Adobe products to my clients. I just wish I could sit in a client meeting, with some glossy brochures filled with all the things I can offer them with LCes and its pdf handling, its form handling its data handling, and all the amazing things on offer and when the client is licking their lips I could offer it all at a price justifiable.
One last time, just to make it quite clear. I think Live Cycle Enterprise Services and all its modules including LCDS 3 is just amazing. I love it. And congratulations to the developers. It;s just price that puts it way out of my clients reach.
Glenn Williams
January 26, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Here’s my two cents on the subject: http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/2010/01/27/lcds-3-becomes-less-affordable
Yakov Fain
January 27, 2010 at 7:00 am
Anil,
I wish I would have found your blog earlier (I must have missed it on the MXNA). I, like many others that posted here have used, and are using LCDS 2.6.1. I love the product. In our enviroment, we leaverage LCDS to present data for lots of very small applications. We don’t have a single large enterprise application that we deal with, but lots of pots of small data sets. By using LCDS we are able to write a few lines of code, and not have to worry about re-inventing the wheel for every request of a database that exists. It’s quick and easy. My ROI comes from not having to employ an FTE (Full Time Equivelent) in my office to simply to back-end database work. We had a single “department” edition of LCDS, and usually averaged about 50 connected users at any given moment.
When I first saw Christian’s demos involving Fiber, I was floored. That technology is SO powerful, maintainable, and just plain wicked. The day that LCDS 3 was announced, we contacted our sales person to get on the bandwagon. I didn’t get a response for 4 weeks (and I had to turn in my budget numbers by the end of the year, so I estimated near the same cost of what we paid before — about $18k including the development license).
When I finally got the quote I was extremely disappointed. There is no way that many companies can justify $60,000 USD for a single middleware application running on 2 CPUs. A dev server was on the quote, along with maintenance (both of which the sales person refused to remove). There was no negotiation power that we had because we were existing customers. Unfortunatly, we naver paid for the maintenance because our budgets are very unpredictable (when you are funded by grants, the funding is always in a “peak” and “valley” mode, making long-term committments very hard to justify).
As far as the cloud-based offering — I know I won’t be able to use it. With all the regulations on us in regards to student data, medical data and financial data, I’m lucky I can use any 3rd party applications at all, let along remotely-hosted. FERPA, HIPPA, MSSA and CELEA are some of the big buggers. Let alone, I don’t know if even I wasn’t bound by those regulations that I would feel comfortable with exposing my database to the world with full read/write access.
I emplore you to take a look at the department license again. I completely understand that you guys don’t want to give this wonderful software away for free (although, the single-cpu version was very popular), but making something affordable for anybody but the bailout banks is a bit short-sighted. I also agree that you have to pay the salaries of the people who work on the code, but a smaller amount would open up the software to a larger base — and if that is the case, I would be your cheerleader (I already was — I’ve done about two dozen presentations to all sorts of usergroups and conferences about LCDS and Flex).
Thanks for your ear!
-Nick Kwiatkowski, ACP
Michigan State University
Manager, Michigan Flex Users Group
Nick Kwiatkowski
January 28, 2010 at 8:13 am
Hello everyone, I again want to thank you all for your continued constructive feedback.
From all the discussion, I can see three distinctive patterns:
1. OEM: Business that have a product that either uses or are planning to use LCDS. Many of these products are in the initial stages and hence these business face business challenges with existing business models.
2. SI’s developing custom solutions for small and medium businesses.
3. Businesses or departments that may be part of large organization, but have limited budgets.
Does this cover the spectrum or am I missing anything?
Again, great discussion and thanks everyone. This is really valuable feedback, and encourage you all to continue such a healthy discussion.
We are discussing various options, and I will update you all as we have some clear direction.
Anil
January 28, 2010 at 12:06 pm
To: Anil Channappa (Product Manager)
Cc: Garen Ingelby (OEM Sales)
My company offers a hosted issue-tracker for small teams called Colabolo (http://www.colabolo.com). We would love to introduce LCDS in our architecture but do not agree with needing to pay $100k upfront to negotiate an OEM agreement and then pay rev share, for buying a middleware.
I am amazed with the clarity of this discussion and yet the absurdity that Adobe is not doing anything about it. Every potential customer on this page is asking for an affordable, simpler pricing model for LCDS. Isn’t it obvious that LCDS needs to be priced cheaper and gain from sales volume (instead of this product that you have to negotiate an “OEM” agreement for if you are building a service for external users)?
If I was the product manager, I would introduce an affordable price-tag for LCDS, making no distinctions such as OEM, SI, department or enterprise, but instead a tiered pricing based on number of users (including unlimited). I think the value of LCDS is as big to enterprise users as it is to ISVs building web applications. To introduce the OEM revenue share concept here with a $100k prepayment requirement only because you want to cover your own costs for this manual, case-by-case OEM rev share negotiation process is self-damaging. Even if you make the OEM rev share sign-up process online, I don’t think ISVs are willing to do rev share deals for buying some middleware component.
The cloud model could work, but only for some customers who do not have strict data security requirements.
In summary, if I were the product manager for LCDS, this is what I would do:
1. Introduce an affordable, tiered pricing model for LCDS licensing, making no distinction if the end-users are internal (currently called “Enterprise”) or external (currently called “OEM”). I suggest charging a few thousand dollars for the unlimited license and selling it online. Then wait and watch the adoption explosion curve. Setup a support center in India if you are worried about support costs. Learn from Atlassian who makes the JIRA you use (costs only a few thousand dollars, and who is not their customer today). They demonstrate the future of enterprise software sales model. Annual fee of few thousand dollars for unlimited users. Support fee is 50% of first year and includes support, software updates and even source code!
2. Introduce the cloud model next.
Thanks for taking the time to read and for your kind consideration. I wish LCDS a bright future on the web!
best regards,
Neeraj
Neeraj
January 29, 2010 at 3:26 am
A couple of months ago I asked one Adobe employee if they are planning to cut the LCDS prices. He replied negatively saying that Adobe has one salesman who knew how to sell expensive LCDS licenses. The management decided that if one can do it everyone can do it.
If this is true, it’s time to learn Silverlight.
Yakov Fain
January 29, 2010 at 5:46 am
Hi, just found your blog but I have to admit that it seems sweet. I fully agree with your post. Have a great day, keep up the nice work and I’ll definitely keep checking your blog.I just got in to the BF BC2 Beta for free, check out this youtube video for instructions on how you can do it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeEGe5fIAXo
Herman Cregin
February 4, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Any idea about the next version of BlazeDS? Does BlazeDS have a future? My company is interested in LCDS but we are not a Flex shop yet so I want to demostrate value on smaller projects using BlazeDS before asking for funding for LCDS. However, at this time the future of BlazeDS is unclear. Will there be a BlazeDS 4?
sandyboy44
February 20, 2010 at 2:10 pm
[...] reading the chain of comments to the blog of Anil Channappa, LCDS and BlazeDS project manager, it seems that Adobe does everything to ensure [...]
Farata Systems » LCDS 3 Becomes Less Affordable
March 9, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Just wanted to add my voice to this. We started a small company that is aiming to produce software for the small to mid sized companies. We were going to use a flex – lcds solutions. In fact have been working on one for the last 6 months.
The new pricing makes this unachievable. It is way more than our pricing model would support. So we now have to look for alternatives.
Not only that, since we no longer trust Adobe at all we will seriously look to dump flex as well. No one wants to base there future on a company who has no interest in your market segment.
I would implore adobe to get out a calculator do some maths and put a figure on the small to medium market that they are ostracizing.
If Adobe wants to be part of this market segment. They need to act quick. As this has been a PR disaster that has turned many people away from the flex / lcds platform.
Murray
March 14, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Hey Murray, you are not alone, we did migrate to weborb for java after 9 months of investing in lcds. It wasn’t without pain but we are back on track now and we didn’t have to throw everything away..
hope you can get back on track too..
and still no word from adobe…
MaTT
March 14, 2010 at 9:57 pm
[...] based on the data shared by current users whose employers allegedly paid (read the comments to the following blog post of Adobe LCDS/BlazeDS Product [...]
Farata Systems » Open source alternatives to LiveCycle Data Servcies
March 15, 2010 at 7:24 am
We wanted to integrate LCDS with our product and talked to adobe and had the same experience. Price is $100K to start an OEM relationship. Our initial cost of engineering to have similar features plus more leveraging concepts from GraniteDS/RED5+Farata, Memcached, Hibernate, Spring etc is going to be significantly lower. This price makes sense for companies who has boat load of money. We have decided not to go down LCDS path for good rather build our own top of what is avaialable ( Thanks Yakov@Farata ..) . For the time being we will stick with Flex but not LCDS
I guess Innovation is the mother of all necessity
Ajay
March 17, 2010 at 9:41 am
We have also decided to remove LCDS from our products as soon as possible, thanks to all the available third-party alternatives.
There’s even a new project posted on Google Code which integrates RTMP into BlazeDS. It’s called mulertmp…
Matthew
March 17, 2010 at 4:01 pm
We’re also put off by the price of LCDS. My product barely uses the data management portion. We only use the ability to push updates to different datagrids. (see my rant in the next paragraph) we’re not even using RTMP. In order for us to do this we have to pay $30K!!! I’m starting to regret using Flex (we’ve been developing for the past 5 years and thousands of $ in Flex builder license later) What I would like to see is Adobe integrate the data management (maybe a simpler one without paging etc) into BlazeDS WITHOUT RTMP. That way they control the bandwidth throttle and richer organizations (That my company will be someday) can afford to pay for the high traffic ability.
The data management only really works for very simple objects. For example, for complicated data structures, the list that gets sent to the datagrid is a denormalized object anyways and isn’t the object that LCDS will manage. Even the lazy loading of objects doesn’t fix this. So $30K for a product that doesn’t even really work in the real world. Come on Adobe…
Jon
May 4, 2010 at 9:23 am
Jon, thanks for the input. Could you be more specific ?
What specific aspects of Data Management are you using?
Also, I am not sure I understand you statement “for complicated data structures, the list that gets sent to the datagrid is a denormalized object anyways and isn’t the object that LCDS will manage. Even the lazy loading of objects doesn’t fix this. So $30K for a product that doesn’t even really work in the real world”. Can you give me an example?
Feel free to send me an email (anilc@adobe.com) if that is convenient.
Anil
May 4, 2010 at 9:43 am
Anil, you have received a lot of input here. However, I can’t help but notice that the sharing of information has not been reciprocated. When do you plan to give us an update on what’s being done on your end, if anything? Subtle hints are all we have thus far. It would be great to bring some closure to this thread.
Matthew
May 16, 2010 at 12:56 am
For most users, like myself, push (through RTMP) is used in its most basic form. ie. data management is not required. Buying LCDS is in this use case, throwing money down the drain. I myself use BlazeDS + red5 (for push) and the MuleRTMP extension for BlazeDS.
It works, no cost involved.
Citronella
May 18, 2010 at 4:34 am
Anil,
There has been lot of feedback given on this blog. It has been a long time. We are waiting for a final response from Adobe and yourside on this.
Do let us know
Mohan
September 29, 2010 at 2:20 am
Adobe / Anil.
The posts on this forum have been amazingly well written, and civil. I’m still in shock at the pricing, only coming to realize my product’s fate, and I’m having trouble not cussing up a storm in my response.
Please update us or tell us who at Adobe is in a position to make a better pricing decision.
Are you still listening??
Travis Somerville
October 7, 2010 at 12:47 pm
But who will benefit from working with weights? Anyone who wants to improve their body shape, increase strength and fitness will benefit, so that covers about all those who intend to work.
dumbbells
March 11, 2011 at 6:56 am
Divert usurp me to beget kitty
Foomaroxsex
April 1, 2011 at 7:59 pm
Anil, how are sales doing, since pricing was altered almost two years ago?
I see Adobe is now pulling back in the Enterprise space according to this InfoWorld article, stating that less that 10 percent of revenue last quarter was from products such as LiveCycle…
http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/adobe-ends-mobile-flash-player-reveals-enterprise-pullback-178474
We’d really like to know what you’re thinking…
Matthew
November 25, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Hi, Any progress on the licensing costs?
Sugan
February 2, 2012 at 6:02 am
[...] that was not mentioned in this doc was LiveCycle Data Services. What’s the face of this highly overpriced monster? Is it dead in the water? I don’t really care about this one. During the last five years I [...]
Reading another funny document by Adobe « Yakov Fain's Blog
February 15, 2012 at 10:50 pm