I have done a lot of Googling to try to find out the licensing terms
of this product - Mercury LoadRunner. I have not had much success. I
wonder if you can unearth something. Apparently the company likes
people to contact their sales reps, which I don't want to do. I would
like to find out from their published literature, or their current
users what thier licensing model is.

To understand how LoadRunner software is priced, first you must
understand how the software works.

You begin with a "Controller" component that executes your scripts. 
You then generate scripts that represent the path of viewers through
your website - Home page, view book, add book, view cart, check out,
etc.

Once you have your scripts defined, then you assign a number of
'virtual users' to the scripts - 10 simultaneous users, 20, 50, 100,
etc.  Generally, the load test will start low, and ramp up as time
passes, allowing you to see the failure point on your site.

Pricing for LoadRunner starts with the purchase of the controller, at $22,000.
Then you determine how many 'virtual users' you wish to have, and buy
a package of users.  The packages start at 25 users, and go as high as
you wish.  The single largest load test was 2.2 million concurrent
users for the Democratic National Convention website.

Pricing for virtual users follows this general progression:

25 -  $ 16,000
50 -  $ 22,000
100 - $ 33,000
200 - $ 44,000
500 - $ 55,000

Those are for basic HTTP transactions.  If you need to test ERP
software with LoadRunner, the virtual users cost an additional 50%.

In addition to the controller and virtual users, you have a mandatory
support contract for the first year, and optional support for
additional years.  This support contract covers all user support,
upgrades, enhancements, etc for free.  This contract will cost 20% of
your total for controller and virtual users.  An example follows:

$22,000      Controller
$33,000      100 virtual users
-------      
$55,000      Subtotal
$11,000      20% cost for support
-------
$66,000      First year expense total

$11,000      Second and following year support fees

Support fees are negotiable.  Costs for each specific sale will be
determined largely by the skills of your negotiating and purchasing
team.  The above is simply the published pricing for Mercury
LoadRunner software, as available to their sales representatives.

For specific pricing for your needs, you will have to contact Mercury
Software directly.  Google Answers cannot act as a negotiating agent
on your behalf.

I hope this answers your question - if you need further information,
please ask for a clarification before rating this answer.


Disclaimer - I am a current user of LoadRunner test software with a
major telecom company.  However, the information I have posted is
public and available to anyone who chooses to call Mercury.

Search Strategy:

Mercury LoadRunner
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=Mercury+LoadRunner


Product Page:
http://www.mercury.com/us/products/performance-center/loadrunner/

'Contact Us' link from product page:
http://www.mercury.com/us/company/corporate-info/contact-us/

One phone call to 1-800-837-8911, and a nice 5 minute conversation with 'Pat'.

Thanks very much. Superb answer.

Hello aflaton,

Without contacting the company, I was only able to find bits of
information on the pricing. The first result below is a few years old,
and the second is rather new. The latter also provides an annual
projection. It seems the pricing is based on the amount of users :

ThinPlanet - 2002
"Mercury LoadRunner for Citrix will start at $52,000 for 50 concurrent
Citrix users..."
http://thinplanet.com/trends/scapa2.asp

To view the second document I found, you will have to use Google to
view the cached version of a PDF file. It should be the 7th result of
this search, with a title of "Appendix E 083004 Revised.xls" :

"Mercury LoadRunner" "license" "cost"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22Mercury+LoadRunner%22+%22license%22+%22cost%22

I would have put the actual URL in - but it is rather lenghty and
would have made this page "less fun" to read. ;-)