Another question you could pose: Is your organisation fitted for the NI-Labview closed "solutions" organisation?
The answer is ... NO.
The hope is something like this: There's lots of used PXI gear out there, most of it NI. I would love to make use of it without involving national instruments or a consultant.
Is this even possible?
Of course, it's possible. depending on your time, effort, experience,...
The big difference is: Do you take responsability for everything yourself, or do you have to document and defend choices to superiors, collegues?
I had success with many homebrew "solutions" partly grabbed from their forum etc, mostly works fine.
But also had huge problems with THEIR Cognex camera drive after a mandatory Labview update, witch turned into some "exception" when I switched between image and settings, (documented). Try to explain the boss the only solution is a workaround with more hardware. Problem too: I wasn't in power to FORCE them to come it explain to my boss, because i wasn't the guy that was in the position to SIGN/NOT SIGN for the yearly +4K they want.
I also had problems with THEIR XP-Modbus driver to access a linear drive. Mostly this worked like a rocket, Sometimes communication was slower than 2sec/message.
And sometimes: The application didn't want to start. Like in: You add a blinking led, and even that doesn't blink.
So another workaround that first start another application, from there, start the "real" application, wait for some heartbeat and then close the first application.
No info, no help from the NI officials off course. But no problem to get them for a demo of their product line.
Try to explain the above to a collegue that doesn't know the difference between a PC and a PLC, or the difference between C and Java.
I had to. Imagine.
My observation is you get help in the beginning, and help to guide you to your purchases. Help if they cooperate in a University, Nasa or media project.
But if it really goes wrong, and they can't find the problem in an hour, you're alone.
My conclusion is I would never pay again for their license BEFORE everything works and is ready to sell to customers.