Xeround, and a tale of evolving business models
Cloud database company Xeround announced that they’re shutting down the version of their service hosted in public clouds such as Amazon, Rackspace, GreenQloud, and others. Users of the free service have until 8 May to move elsewhere, whilst paying customers have until 15 May. The company describes this as an attempt to “re-focus,” with the [...]
The Only Kind of Product That Can Pull Off Freemium
The Wall Street Journal finally picks up on the freemium trend (it’s only been 2-3 years, right?) The problem is, anyone reading the article is probably under the impression that what succeeds and what doesn’t i…
Freemium Is The New Piracy In The SaaS World
It is estimated that approximately 41% of revenue, close to $53 billion, is “lost” in software piracy. This number is totally misleading since it assumes that all the people who knowingly or unknowingly pirated software would have bought the software at the published price had they not pirated it. RIAA also applies the same nonsense [...]
Now You Can Get Your Google Apps Data Backed Up for Free. Startup Econ 101: When Giving it Away is a Good Deal.
Ouch that’s a longish title. OK, I admit, I am tired, could not decide between two messages and ended up combining them. Well, let’s see the messages. The Art of Pricing The other day I got into a tweet convo with a Startup Entrepreneur whose product I found interesting, at least at first glance. But [...]
Enterprise microblogging should be pay-per-use
An article by Dennis Howlett about Socialtext and Yammer yesterday caught my attention. In essence SocialText announces that they’ll sell their product at 80% of Yammer’s price (being very brief here) but I think they’re both wrong. Social has its own Pareto rule: 90-9-1 versus the old-fashioned 80-20. It means that 1% of people creates [...]
Salesforce.com Acquires DimDim
Image via CrunchBase Salesforce.com (see previous CloudAve coverage) today announced that it is acquiring DimDim, a low priced Webex competitor, for approximately 31 Million in cash. DimDim was founded in 2007 with its development office in Hyderabad, India. They offered real time collaboration service with video, presentation, whiteboard, etc.. I have been using/following DimDim ever [...]
Sonoa Rebrands As Apigee, New Premium Features Added
Sonoa Systems (See our previous coverage of Sonoa), a provider of enterprise API management solutions, today announced that they are rebranding as Apigee, which, so far, was a free API tools platform helping developers easily tap into the APIs of modern social networks and other web applications. The rebranding removes confusion on their offerings and [...]
SaaS Product Marketing – Upgrade and Upsell Strategy
I think it would be hard to overemphasize the importance of upgrades and upsells in SaaS product marketing. In an industry where free trials, freemium versions, bargain basement subscription prices and simply hoping to recover customer acquisition cost with first year revenue are the norm, few things are sweeter than a customer that actually [...]
Freemium model of employment
There are always risks to finding a job, one of the ways you can look for something to do while you are looking for the perfect gig is to do many forms of volunteerism. One other option though is the “Freemium Model” of employment where you give your time to a company for a percentage [...]
Doing Well By Doing Good, Atlassian Ramps up Philanthropy (Again)
Image via CrunchBase Earlier this year Atlassian successfully achieved its objective of raising $100000 for Room to Read, an organization that builds schools, libraries in rural communities in Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Laos, Zambia. They offered a Five licenses for $5 campaign for their products, with all proceeds going to the charity. Philanthropy isn’t a [...]
The New Economics of Technology Startups?
I have recently been reading the book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” by Chris Anderson. Well I am not actually reading it as I find I do not have time for reading books any more. These days I do all of my “book reading” using audio books from Audible.com. I find that by [...]
Free Sometimes Comes at a Huge Cost
The other day I was having lunch with a bunch of technology entrepreneurs and the subject came up of the falling service levels we all experience. The conversation was particularly around the telecommunications field but could have easily been any aspect of commerce. The chap sitting next to me had a particular perception; When I [...]
Not All "Free" is Created Equal
I’m still mired in reading Chris Anderson’s latest book; “Free”. I doubt I’ll finish it. 130+ pages in, I haven’t discovered anything illuminating. In fact, I’d argue that by combining a number of very different applications of free under one umbrella, Anderson does not clarify free, but rather makes it more confusing. For example, a business model [...]
Another Online ScreensharingTool – and Another Rant About Freemium
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the excitement I felt hearing that Web meeting application Yuuguu was integrated with Skype. Hot on the heels of that I was contacted by the creators of Mikogo, another online meeting, web presentation and remote support application creator. So what is Mikogo? It’s a desktop sharing [...]
