Great points PJZ99 and kuroyume!   May I say, me too! I agree wholeheartedly.

I wanted to add this too:
Over last 20 years working for clients, I can tell you that no matter how high end the software is, invariably a client will ask for something that requires a lot of inventiveness and jumping through hoops, and hardly something that can be accomplished at the push of a button, or two or three, or by someone with little experience. Its' the companies that give them what they want that get the clients. Close is usually not good enough. It has to be right on the money.

Part of my job, as the director if a 3D visualizations department in my company is to farm out work when practical, feasible, and we get qiality product back. I'd LOVE to be able to farm out more work, but unfortunately, something always happens... the consultants often misrepresent their abilities (something that happens all too often), or don't deliver on time or aren't available when needed and a ton of other little things that makes it unfeasible or impossible to use them. That's when you're doing business and have to be conscious of product quality, costs, timely delivery (a biggie), copyrights and similar business related issues.

Sometimes farming out $10,000 worth of work, to someone that has a mishap and doesn't deliver, can end up costing out company few milion dollars in lost contracts. It's just not worth the business risk.

I've been on both sides, operated a small company, viz studio of my own with couple of employees 4-5 years back, and working for medium and large companies. Most of the time, software is the least of the issues and least of the costs. Goofed up projects often cost 10-15 times more then several copies of some $4-5 grand software.
Reputation for putting out a quality product is hard to build, and easy to mess up. There's a saying in our business, you're only as good as your last mistake.

Hi, my namez: "NO, Bad Kitteh, NO!"  Whaz yurs?
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