Microsoft just announced changes intended to reconcile new technology and old licensing models, effective December 1. Microsoft will now calculate the cost of server software products by the number of running instances of that product on any given server, rather than the number of physical processors contained in that server.
Tag Archives | Marketing
Marketing is the way we tell our story so it’s relevant to real people in their real lives. Telling our story is more than branding and logos but how the price, the value proposition, the routes to market and all that tie together as part of a whole.
Licensing Trends: Software Vendors vs. Enterprises
While vendors are trying to move customers to term licensing (subscriptions), enterprise customers continue to sing the praises of concurrency due to its cost savings and easier management. According to research by Macrovision, subscriptions or term licensing will be offered by a majority of software vendors for the first time in 2006. By 2007, the forecast is that fully two-thirds of software vendors will offer term licensing even though 57% of enterprises prefer perpetual licensing. Moreover, by better than 2-to-1, enterprises see concurrent licensing as preferred over seat-based licensing. Concurrency is the only licensing model to see an increase in customer preference during the past year, so we are already looking forward to the hallway conversations next year.
In the longer term, utility pricing looks to address the needs of both software vendors and enterprises, but utility pricing is clearly not ready for prime time yet.
Channel Optimization: Are you paying your channel too much?
Given the constant squeeze on end-user prices, increased channel competition, and investor demands for steady–if not increasing–earnings, it is hard to believe that many high-tech companies have an untapped source of additional profits on current business.
In a recent worldwide channel economics study, Rubicon studied industry giants like Microsoft, Symantec, Apple and Macromedia, as well as their top channel partners, and found that each vendor, in their own way, was leaving money–profits–on the table. Neither the channel nor the vendor was using their channel investments optimally to bring products to market. The Rubicon study found that the investments many companies make in the channel do not prevent loss of mindshare or improve returns. Most importantly, the study revealed that channel economics are changing in ways that challenge conventional wisdom.
Rubicon in the News
Nilofer Merchant will be speaking at SoftSummit on October 11 as part of a panel on Innovation. Learn more. Nilofer Merchant’s article on Value Innovation is a featured in the September 26 Sand Hill.com newsletter. You can read the article here. Soft-Letter is publishing a version of this month’s featured article on Channel Optimization in [...]