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List:       sas-l
Subject:    Was Re: Treedisc macro? now product fragmentation.
From:       IAS <iasinfo () MEDIAONE ! NET>
Date:       1998-09-30 5:33:31
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On Wed, 30 Sep 1998 14:52:29 -0400, Warren Sarle wrote:

>TREEDISC has been superseded by EM. It is not part of EM.

I understand that. I've seen demos of EM and realize its a much more
comprehensive and easier to use product and I'd absolutely love to have
it. Unfortunately, its price is way out of range for those of us who
have only an occasional need to do a CHAID or CART analysis and do not
work for a large corporation. Treedisc is by no means ideal, but at
least the price is right. It just seemed a shame that with the advent
of EM it disappeared from the SAS web site.

This brings up the whole subject of product fragmentation. SI seems
hellbent on dividing up the system into little pieces. The treedisc
macro is an example. To perform all its functions you need base, stat,
iml, and graph. Or consider the poor market researcher who needs to do
a conjoint analysis. There is a great application, market, which uses
stat and graph to do the analysis. Unfortunately, you need OR to
generate an orthogonal array so that you can design the study in the
first place. To license OR to do maybe one or two orthogonal arrays a
year is just not cost effective if you have no other use for the
product. I'm sure others can think of many other examples.

This seems to me to be a short-sighted revenue enhancement effort. Just
as an example, I mention an acquaintance who manages a department of a
major SAS customer. He does the occasional conjoint study. Rather than
licensing OR at a hefty yearly fee, he bought a conjoint package for a
one-time $600 just to generate the orthogonal arrays. Now he's looking
at other alternatives for different functions. This doesn't seem to be
something that SI should like to encourage. It also doesn't help those
of us who depend on SAS for a living. All we need is to have our
potential clients switching to other, often inferior software because
of pricing issues.

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