Most expensive software to license?

[Cubsfan]

In my other thread about a CMOS layout editor called Anyone know anything about L-Edit (which you can feel free to help me in if you know about it ) RGillen mentioned this:

I’ve never seen it in my (admittedly short) industry experience. The #1 schematic/layout program is certainly Cadence. #2 is Mentor Graphics. After that are several smaller tool suites. To be honest, I’ve never heard of L-Edit til now.

#1 and #2 cost roughly $100,000 - $200,000 per seat plus $20,000 - $30,000 a year for maintenance depending on how many features you want. I have heard of companies using the free Magic tools, but nobody “serious” does.

$200K? Per Seat? Then all that money every year to keep it up to date? This must be the most expensive software on the market? Or is it?

What is the most exensive ones you have heard of or have used? I had no idea there was any software out there that cost this much.

[CookingWithGas]

Wow, that does sound expensive as a per seat cost. But other industrial-strength software, like big financial systems, ERP packages, billing systems, etc., can cost millions to license and 6 figures annual support. I have seen software licensed based on the following:

Number of development and production servers hosting it
Total number of registered users
Total number of concurrent users

And lately, I’ve seen at least one system licensed based on company revenue. I’ve seen this with a billing system–so that as the company’s revenues rise, the billing system company gets paid more licensing fees, without doing anything! It’s the ultimate exploitation of the demand curve.