I know one good example. Gurobi (http://www.gurobi.com/ http://www.gurobi.com/) sells a very advanced Linear Programming (LP) and Mixed Integer Linear Programm

I know one good example. Gurobi (http://www.gurobi.com/ http://www.gurobi.com/) sells a very advanced Linear Programming (LP) and Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solver. The software is more than 10K+ for a license. They use paid AMI's that let you run their software for $4-8/hour, depending on the instance size (High Memory Extra Large to High Memory Quadruple Extra Large). I imagine is it a good way for them to get over the chicken and egg problem. It is hard for developers to convince their managers that it will solve their problem without trying it, and they can't try it without the software. It also allows people like me to experiment with Gurobi without much up front cost.