Hoping to entice existing customers to upgrade or transition to its latest, services-oriented architecture-based products, Infor today announced a pair of temporary offers that cut upgrade and professional services charges while holding the line on upgrade-related maintenance price increases.

The offers, available to Infor customers that are under maintenance contracts, come at a time when some enterprise software customers have begun to question the value of annual maintenance programs offered by vendors. Recently, for example, customer concerns about SAP’s plans to raise maintenance prices prompted the enterprise software leader to develop with users a benchmarking program intended to demonstrate maintenance program value.

Infor’s announcement also follows a limited-time, interest-free financing offer made earlier this month by the company, intended to help potential customers preserve cash in the short term.

One of the two new Infor offers, dubbed Flex Upgrade, involves substantial reductions in the licensing fees often charged to the company’s customers when they upgrade to certain new products. The price reductions vary, with some as much as 50%, said Infor Senior Vice President Dennis Michalis in an interview with Managing Automation.

Infor is also suspending maintenance price increases that would normally accompany upgrade-related license charges, he said. In addition, Infor is discounting some professional service charges related to upgrades covered by the Flex programs.

Infor customers not currently on an active maintenance program can take advantage of the Flex offers by signing up for maintenance, Michalis said.

In addition to the Flex Upgrade program, Infor is offering Flex Exchange, which offers similar discounts to customers migrating between Infor platforms. License fees to migrate between applications under the Flex Exchange program would be about $150 per user, Michalis said. Flex Exchange also includes a promise of no maintenance fee increase associated with the migration.

Infor’s goal in rolling out the Flex programs is twofold, he said. First, the company wants to encourage customers that may be running older versions of Infor products to upgrade to later releases that support Infor’s Open SOA framework. That framework allows newer applications to take advantage of innovations such as the company’s MyDay role-based user interface, and it makes it easier for customers to add new functionality to their application suites in the future.

“In the long run, customers will be in a better position to take advantage of innovations to come,” Michalis said. “That includes enhancements that come natively to these products as well as extensions such as asset management.”

Second, he continued, Infor wants to demonstrate clearly to its customers the value of remaining on or renewing maintenance contracts.