When do you plan to implement support for MS Project 2007?

 

Thanks. 

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This message was posted using Aspose.Live 2 Forum

We would also like to know if you have a time table for the support of MS Project 2007. As soon as it supports MS Project 2007 we will purchase it.

I agree, as soon as MS Project 2007 is supported I will buy several licenses.

Hi all,

I thank you for sharing your needs.

I will discuss with the Aspose.Tasks team to push this move.

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Ben Li
Team Leader, Aspose Sydney Team
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Hi Ben

Thanks for the prompt reply.

If you could supply a timeline for the delivery of Project 2007 support that would assist me in determining the next step for my solution.

Do you have an indicative timeline?  Is it even on the horizon?

Hello,

The estimated release date for Project 2007 MPP support is end of August.

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Alexey Zhilin
Team Leader
Aspose Tyumen Team
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Support for MS Project 2007 in August this year is good news.

Hi all,

The team leader of Aspose.Tasks shared with me that the return can not justify the investment for him to assign a dedicated developer to Aspose.Tasks. This is the basic reason why the features list of Aspose.Tasks grows slowly. Given that the potential customer base is much smaller than that of other major file format components like Aspose.Slides, maybe raising price is the only option to fix this incentive issue.

Since you guys are passinate to accquire Aspose.Tasks, I would want to collect your honest feedbacks regarding if you're really pricing sensitive to Aspose.Tasks. In other words, if we raise the price of Aspose.Tasks, will you still buy Aspose.Tasks?

As the founder of Aspose, from my point of view, I want Aspose to become a serious file format expert. We have hacked some file formats but I would be quite keen to hire more product teams to hack more file formats. But for most minor file formats like Microsoft Project, the financial return can not motivate most developers if we continue to use the current pricing scheme. So definitely all your feedbacks will be a great help for me to derive our product line development strategy as well.

I thank you for your valuable input in advance.

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Ben Li
Team Leader, Aspose Sydney Team
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Hi Ben

Here's my 20c worth.

As long as the price is relatively reasonable I would still be very interested if the price of Aspose Tasks was increased.

From my research you guys are the only people who will allow me to manage MS Project files on my server in a SaaS environment - this is very important to me and is your unique advantage.  Surely that is reason enough to press on with MS Project 2007 support??

I agree: as long as the price stays reasonable (both end-user and OEM) we'll keep buying the licenses

Hi MPMM and LogicSoft,

I thank you for sharing your thoughts about the pricing.

My basic idea is its starting subscription fee still stays within three figures so let's assume it $999. This pricing scheme simply indicates:

1. Challengeable technical implementation. The team leader of Aspose.Tasks shared with me that hacking Microsoft Project file format is not so easy but just boring in most cases. I think this is a reasonable view and I expect you can understand that.
2. Smaller customer base. As I shared in an earlier post, you could not expect same market demand as Aspose.Slides, etc. just because Microsoft Project is being used by much less people than Microsoft PowerPoint.
3. Unique market position. As you shared there is no other competitive offering in the market.

 

Developer Enterprise Subscription Enterprise edition Single developer Discount applies to multiple purchases Internal deployment or deployment to 1 customer site Free new releases and hot fixes for 1 year Free technical support for 1 year For a more detailed description, click here. US$999	Site Enterprise Subscription Enterprise edition Single physical site with 6 - 10 developers Discount applies to multiple purchases Internal deployment or deployment to 1 customer site Free new releases and hot fixes for 1 year Free technical support for 1 year For a more detailed description, click here. US$3996
Developer OEM Subscription OEM Enterprise edition Single Developer Discount applies to multiple purchases Royalty free OEM to unlimited customer sites Free new releases and hot fixes for 1 year Free technical support for 1 year For a more detailed description, click here. US$2997	Site OEM Subscription OEM Enterprise edition Single physical site with 6 - 10 developers Discount applies to multiple purchases Free new releases and hot fixes for 1 year Royalty free OEM to unlimited customer sites Free technical support for 1 year For a more detailed description, click here. US$11988

This pricing scheme is not to cost customers a fortune to buy Aspose.Tasks so Aspose can profit greatly from Aspose.Tasks. Instead, I just want to make sure the Aspose.Tasks team can be financially motivated then they can afford at least one dedicated developer to continuously upgrade the product and at the same time serve any customers who need help and assistance.

If this pricing scheme can be understood and accepted by the market, potentially Aspose as a whole can provide a full range of file format product line. In other words, other less popular file format components can be priced in the same scheme to fix the issue of return on investment (ROI). For example, Microsoft Visio file format:

http://www.aspose.com/community/forums/thread/4309/aspose.diagram-product-preview.aspx

 We had a brilliant product team to try this file format but ultimately they gave up just because they were worried about its ROI.

Aspose is fully customer-driven so we just listen to customers. If the proposed pricing has scared you just feel free to let me know. Then I will continue to work on it so we can find a good balance between Aspose and customers.

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Ben Li
Team Leader, Aspose Sydney Team
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Ben,

I'm afraid this model is not going to work for us. I'm not sure about other products, but I don't think Subscription is a good fit for the .Tasks component.
Subscription model works really well for the GUI components (e.g. Telerik, Infragistics, etc). These guys release new versions every 3-4 months and the subscribers receive those updates free of charge. Every time a new functionality is added.

When buying .Tasks I expect to receive a working version that will perform a basic function: import data from and export data to MS Project. So I'm not sure what Aspose.Tasks updates/upgrades are going to be available within a year. An annual subscription would make sense if Microsoft were to release a new version of Project
several times a year, but it's not the case. So unless the subscription guarantees a free upgrade to the next version of MS Project, it's useless.

Another reason: we're looking for an OEM solution. With the new pricing for 2 developers we're are looking for a $6,000 price tag. That's way over our budget.

Hi LogicSoft,

Aspose.Tasks is one of our minor components so subscription does not make much sense because the product team does not frequenly publish new releases. If you look at the Downloads section you can find all the major components do have frequent new releases. Because we put all products under one roof a minor product like Aspose.Tasks inherits the same scheme by default. This would definitely save much adminstrative overhead so I hope you can understand that.

Regarding the pricing of our minor file format components like Aspose.Tasks, we can be flexible to tailor it to make each customer happy. Put simply, we may price it as high as possible, for example, starting from $999 like the above, and then state the pricing is just indicative. You can go straight way to place an order if the pricing is OK for you. Or you can negotiate a private deal with Aspose if you feel it is too much. Since the potential customer base is much smaller, we can afford such extra efforts to make sure to collect maximal revenue to fund the product team so they can continuously upgrade the product.

Please feel free to share what you think about this.

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Ben Li
Team Leader, Aspose Sydney Team
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We would be willing to pay a higher price as suggested.

Is the MS Project 2007 support by the end of August still valid?

Hi MarLicht,

Thanks for your support and we will try to work hard to make the new pricing scheme work out so customers like you can always get continous upgrades in time.

Hi Alexey,

Please confirm the delivery timeframe.

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Ben Li
Team Leader, Aspose Sydney Team
About Us, Contact Us