Netscape Communications Corp is coming under such extreme competitive pressure from Microsoft Corp, which gives most of its Internet-related software away free, that it has decided the only way to respond is to put prices for much of its software for corporate intranets up – the thinking, presumably, being that you get what you pay for. Netscape will announce higher prices for its software for personal computers and servers, Eric Hahn, vice-president of engineering, said in response to a question at the Goldman Sachs Technology Symposium. The integrated Communicator package will rise to $60 from $50, the enterprise server software will zoom to $1,300 from $1,000, and several other Netscape software products will be boosted by similar margins. Details were not immediately available. His case is that if a customer’s cost of deploying and installing Netscape software is calculated, the software is an even better deal than rival products offered by Microsoft and IBM Corp’s Lotus, he asserted, but that sounds like a difficult sell in a market mesmerized by headline prices. Hewlett-Packard Co is to bundle Netscape Communications Corp’s Navigator Gold client software with every HP 9000 workstation and its FastTrack Server with every HP 9000 server it sells. The products for the HP 9000 are available immediately from HP and can be downloaded over the World Wide Web.
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