BCD to Aggressively Build Out Its Business Partner Base

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Having gotten the blessing of IBM as its wares were added to the iSeries Developer's Roadmap a few weeks ago, Business Computer Design Int'l (BCD) is pulling out all the stops as it attempts to build out its own business partner base. BCD's announcement today that it will be offering partners greater flexibility and lower costs if they use BCD's tools to create or modernize iSeries applications dovetails with IBM's announcements that it will open up the Developer's Roadmap and kick-start application innovation in the iSeries market.

Back in September 2003, BCD started to experiment with new pricing models and announced it would give away 1,000 licenses of its OS/400 portal application, Nexus, which rides on top of its WebSmart Web application server. At the same time, the company offered BCD business partners that wanted to develop applications using Nexus (or add the Nexus portal to their existing applications) a free license to Nexus. Those partners could also distribute Nexus for free to their customers. These end users only had to pay the annual maintenance on Nexus. A month later, BCD offered its business partners, consultants, and independent software vendors a suite of development tools from BCD--including the WebSmart integrated development environment (IDE), the WebSmart Web application server (WAS), the Nexus portal, the ProGen Plus program generator and report writer, the DbGen database tool, and the Catapult report distribution tool--for free. Under the conditions of BCD's partner programs, says Eric Figura, BCD's sales and marketing manager, prospective partners had to pick up WebSmart, Nexus, and Catapult as a minimum to be considered a partner and therefore get the tools without having to pay licensing fees for them. Up until now, this program has been restricted to the United States and Canada, and BCD has attracted more than 50 development partners, says Figura.

With today's announcement, BCD is not putting any restrictions on its partnership terms. Partners can cherry pick across any and all of BCD's products and still get all of the benefits of being a BCD partner, which includes up to 400 sales leads in their geographic region and discounts on the BCD software that they in turn sell to end user companies. Under the expanded BCD business partner program, the deal is going global and BCD is making available the entire catalog of BCD software products for partners to acquire by just paying for maintenance. That includes the new WebSmart JSE Java-enabled Web application server as well as the older CGI-based WebSmart server, which is now called WebSmart WAS OE, or Original Edition, plus the new RPG/DDS to Web (RDW) conversion tool, and any future products in development. Those partners who take the whole BCD toolset will get an even better deal than simply having to pay maintenance for the software. BCD will cap the maintenance fees at $7,500 a year for the whole BCD suite; this represents about a 50 percent discount on the maintenance fees on a P10-class iSeries development system, says Figura.

Once BPs develop applications using WebSmart or ProGen Plus, they can distribute those applications on a royalty-free basis. Customers will, however, have to license the WebSmart WAS (either the JSE or OE version, depending on the applications) and they will have to pay annual maintenance on it after they acquire it. BPs get a piece of the action on the BCD software they sell to end users, but they do not get a cut of the maintenance fees. To sweeten the deal, BCD is giving away unlimited technical support to partners, available 24x7 on the Web and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central Time via telephone. BCD is also throwing in a few hours of Web-based training for new partners, plus hard and soft copy documentation for all of its products. Finally, BCD has been putting out free code snippets for its toolset at www.progenwebsmart.com. That repository now contains nearly 100 routines, including SQL queries, JavaScript, data extraction algorithms, and graphing and charting algorithms that can be woven into WebSmart and Nexus applications.

Figura says getting on the iSeries Developers Roadmap has significantly increased interest in BCD's tools, particularly WebSmart. Figura sells WebSmart against IBM's WebSphere middleware, and it is no secret that he and the BCD technical team do not have a lot of respect for the IBM software. "Some people were fearful of announcing they were supporting WebSmart and building applications with it because they feared recriminations from the WebSphere team at IBM," he says.

Now that IBM has opened the iSeries Development Roadmap to not just BCD, but to all 180 vendors in the iSeries Tools Network, maybe all tool vendors will have an easier time convincing software developers in OS/400 shops and in third-party application development companies that they can pick the tools that suit them best without worrying about repercussions from Big Blue.

"One of the things we do much better than IBM is run sophisticated software on smaller systems," boasts Figura. "For business partners, that means their clients do not need to do a hardware upgrade, which has made the iSeries a hard sell. This has been a big problem," he says. "With our tools, customers can stay on smaller systems and our partners can develop applications affordably. They are ecstatic that they don't need to sell $60,000 in new hardware just to get a $10,000 consulting contract with an iSeries shop."