• Chris,

    It's a balance and I'm not sure how to address it. Microsoft doesn't expect, in my mind, everyone to upgrade to the next release. What they likely think is they will have 30-50% each time, with some people upgrading every 3 years, some every 6.

    The problem is that if you wait 5-6 years between releases, it's a big upgrade. There are so many feature changes that it can be a hassle to train your people, not to mention upgrade related software. It's also harder to test and know if it makes sense.

    Do any of us want to develop one big piece of software every 3 years in our company? No, we want to be more agile, releasing more often, and vendors are doing this as well. They also have to work out pricing, support, etc., but by moving to shorter cycles, they can get a certain amount of people to move each time in smaller upgrades.

    Oracle, DB2, etc. do this, but they do point releases, and Microsoft has gotten away from that in a marketing move. However I believe the IBM/Oracle force maintenance on you, so you are paying for the point releases in a different way.

    I'd say that MS should offer discounts for upgrades, and perhaps include R2 for free if you have the "base" version.