Suppose you work at FlexTime and Neil has asked you to help analyze the software situation. He wants to compute the total costs of three alternatives: (1) upgrading to Version 3 of the current software, (2) licensing the open source software, and (3) licensing another vendor's thin-client software. He has asked you to identify all of the costs that should be consid- ered. Note that he is not asking you to determine those costs, nor even to know how to determine those costs. He simply wants a list of costs to con- sider (Figure 4-14).
a. Using Figure 4-14 as a guide, identify potential costs for each component for development and operation of the new system.
b. Using your intuition, do you think the list of costs that you identified in part a is likely to swamp the costs of the software license fee? Why or why not?