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Software being a non-physical product, it is sometimes hard to guess prices. And while consumer-grade software has price listed, for most enterprise software (for instance Documentum or FileNet) you have to contact the editor or a reseller to get a price.

Is there an open database listing prices of enterprise software?

Each entry should probably detail:

  • Country of purchase
  • Year of purchase
  • Educational establishment status
  • Support level
  • Limitations, for instance seats limit, users limit, volume limit, number of servers/cores limit
  • Other applicable conditions
  • Whether actually bought, or just received a quote

Of course, the same thing can be sold at different prices depending for instance on delays and on the negotiation strategy of the sellers and buyers. So the database should allow several prices for the same thing.

Nicolas Raoul
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    Unfortunately many such products vary enormously on price based on many factors such as location, number of seats licenced, relationship with other companies, educational establishment status, willingness to take part in beta test programs, available support personnel & perceived marketing benefits - worse still many such purchases are subject to internal or external Non Disclosure Agreements. – Steve Barnes Aug 25 '14 at 06:47
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    Thanks for the feedback! I used it to improve the question. You are right about the NDAs, hopefully vendors that force 100% of their potential customers to sign a proper NDA are not the majority. – Nicolas Raoul Aug 25 '14 at 07:17
  • Actually the company I work for has an NDA in place for all staff/contractors that adding to such a database would infringe as how much the company spends and on what are proprietary information. – Steve Barnes Aug 25 '14 at 07:55
  • I wish something like this existed but I don't think it does. I think you'll have to compile something like this yourself and unfortunately it will become out of date quickly as software is a fast-moving market. I often find the enterprise software pricing info I need by doing creative google searches which often return results on Quora and copies of PDF'ed contracts enterprise software companies have created with state/local/federal government which are semi-open data – Mark Silverberg Aug 25 '14 at 13:04
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    There have been attempts to use open record laws to get access to government (and university) prices on contracts (and get around NDAs) ... but even just trying to do it for one product requires a lot of work, and dealing with the company trying to sue to prevent disclosure. See Bergstrom et.al's "Evaluating big deal journal bundles" – Joe Aug 25 '14 at 17:14

1 Answers1

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  1. A source at the US federal government level is GSA Advantage! which allows schedule holders (government contractors) to list products and services that government agencies can purchase much like an online shopping cart.

    This is by no means clean or normalized data and runs into the issues described in the comment thread above about discounts/sales.

  2. Another one at the US federal government level is USASpending.gov which has it's own data issues but is supposed to be comprehensive. This will show you prices actually paid under contract/grant/etc. rather than list prices. Unfortunately, usually only a top-line number is available and transparency of the actual contract terms is not what many wish they were. Here's a sample search for FileNet where you can filter to see only purchases directly from FileNet Corporation versus other resellers/service providers.

Community
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Mark Silverberg
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