Call For Pricing
One of the most fascinating, yet relatively unchartered areas of cloud computing’s all-out assault on today’s enterprise is the complex beast that is the consumption-based pricing model. Technical, operational and of course, security issues aside, it is easy to see how the advent of pay-for-what-I-use, which is commonplace in pretty much all of the leading Public [...]
Organized Robbery
We’re at a time of rebellion against maintenance fees, which now include the elements of insurance, extortion, declining systems, and of course refactoring all of which add to the costs of any implementation. Add that into the actual implementation itself, and one is left with whopping fees and eventually ineffective…
Did 37Signals Increase BaseCamp Price or Not? The Backdoor Experiment.
There’s a debate going on about 37Signal’s “hidden” “unannounced” price increase of their popular Basecamp service. Apparently most of the uproar wasn’t so much due to the price hike itself, but the fact that it happened without any announcement. Cinovate Cinovate Cloud Inn. Why did 37 Signal’s Basecamp price double unannounced? http://bit.ly/bLan2a Contact Cinovate for [...]
You set the price; I’ll set the terms
Bill Daniels, a cable tycoon, was a consummate deal maker. I never had the honor of meeting Bill, but his reputation in the industry has stood the test of time as have some quotes that have been attributed to him. My Partners, some of whom had the great pleasure of knowing and doing business with Bill, are [...]
Windows Azure TCO Calculator
It has been just over a year since Microsoft announced about their Cloud Computing platform, Windows Azure. This year’s PDC is just around the corner and Azure is going to dominate the event. You can check out some of the sessions you can expect in this year’s event. For those who were in deep coma [...]
Moving From On-Premises to SaaS, Thoughts on Revenue Corrosion
Image via CrunchBase A recurring theme for me in my writing is the pain that traditional on-premises vendors feel when considering, or actually making, a move to SaaS. Recently I posted about the success Callidus has had with this very move. Within days of that post I was contacted by Ariba software, a vendor in [...]
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 [...]
On Pricing, Demand and Critical Mass
Recently I received a press release from SaaS accounting vendor e-conomic (CloudAve review here) announcing the release of a new pricing structure. Their various pricing plans are dropping by a few pounds a month. Meanwhile they’ve increased the maximum transaction number to allow more companies to work within their small business plan. Commenting on the [...]
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 [...]
There Is No Way Microsoft Can Kill Google Or Zoho
When Microsoft announced the release of a lightweight web based Office suite along with Office 2010, pundits were busy calculating the hit it will have on Google’s marketshare in this space and, also, writing an obituary for companies like Zoho (disclaimer: Zoho is the sponsor of this blog but this is my independent opinion). I [...]
Xero Releases Multi-currency and First Hint of Tiered Pricing
(Disclosure – in the lead-up to the release of multi-currency, I did a very small amount of contracting to Xero to produce some marketing videos) A couple of months ago while I was in San Francisco I saw a sneak preview of some screen flows for Xero’s multi-currency capability. At the time I was pretty [...]
QuickArrow Releases Small Business Edition
QuickArrow Small Business Edition is a new offering launched yesterday that comes from a ten year veteran of professional services automation software. QuickArrow’s other products are used by over 30000 users worldwide and is used by some high profile companies. QuickArrow is based in Austin, Texas and is a privately held company. The solution provides [...]
McKinsey Report Has FUD Value But Amazon Should Cut Prices
Recently, McKinsey released a report titled “Clearing the air on cloud computing” and it has upset many of the Cloud Computing advocates. According to this report, the cloud computing services like Amazon EC2 might offer substantial savings for small and medium companies but they are pretty expensive from the enterprise point of view. They also [...]
Get Real With Pricing
Since beginning my Accounting 2.0 series I’ve reviewed dozen of accounting applications from lightweight invoicing numbers through to fully fledged systems. I’ve also seen a bunch of different price point thrown into the mix – from free through to many thousands of dollars per annum. The two ends of that spectrum can be safely ignored [...]
Zumodrive Launches, Forgets About Transparency
Krish wrote in December about the importance for startups to do the math early and publish their pricing: In the absence of any word about the future pricing plans, users are hesitant to put their data on these storage startups, usually offering generous amounts of storage space. Why would anyone spend their valuable time uploading [...]
