SunSoft Inc is understood to have restructured its discount schedule, which originally played only to the larger Sparc cloners. Sources say that the new terms demand no up-front payments, as in the past, to qualify for reasonable discounts, offering smaller resellers better margins. The schedule currently being circulated by SunSoft salesmen is different for Solaris 1.X and Solaris 2.0. Discount levels are determined according to aggregate purchases over three years and will apparently be policed every four months. The highest possible discount, for which Sun Microsystems Inc qualifies, requires purchases of over $20m and fetches a discount of 70% on Solaris 1.X and 60% on Solaris 2.0. Resellers in the $10m to $20m category get 68% and 58% respectively. Those in the $7m to $10m class 66% and 56%, $3.5m to $7m 62% and 52%, and $1.5m to $3.5m 55% and 45%. Purchases of $700,000 to $1.5m rate 30% on either product, sales of up $700,000 rate 10% on either too. Failure to sell at the needed volume will not result in billbacks but will cause the discount to be slashed. Previously, sources said, SunSoft required an up-front payment of $120,000 to qualify for a 55% discount, a practice that worked against small reseller and laid the seeds for a grey market developing. OEM customers reportedly pay $75,000 to get source code for internal use and an additional $225,000 before they begin to distribute binary. If SunSoft does the implementation, it costs $150,000, but that’s apparently $150,000 every time it needs to be done even though SunSoft has to change only 5% of the code, an activity that takes only seven to 10 days. On the other hand, if SunSoft does it, it’s incorporated on the Compact Disk. List prices vary significantly with the size of the system sold. SunSoft recognizes six distinct hardware classes. The lower discounts on Solaris 2.0 are apparently intended to help SunSoft recover its development costs. Sources say SunSoft salesmen have told them only 1,000 packages are up under Solaris 2.0 compared with 4,500 under Solaris 1.X.
