6 ms·

Doubt it. Not for office. But for niche software like specialty engineering software etc this is already the case. In the case of the software I build for a liv

Doubt it. Not for office. But for niche software like specialty engineering software etc this is already the case. In the case of the software I build for a living the billing granularity is minutes (and this is for traditional heavy desktop software not some web SaaS).

ccakes 5y ago
Super interesting! Can you share the name of the software?
- akoster 5y ago
  IIRC while on an internship at Broadcom, lots of EDA tools were utilized by sending a script to a (Sun Solaris?) grid compute cluster to save on license costs or due to licenses being billed per minute or cpu-minute. I do recall some internal "wall of shame" dashboard listing users with the most (idle?) minutes using an EDA tool.
  - not2b 5y ago
    It is more likely that the company has a fixed number of licenses for some product, and is using a grid to maximize the amount of work they get out of those licenses. That is the usual practice with expensive EDA software, to the extent that the vendors will help customers set it up.
- d_t_w 5y ago
  Not the OP but our product falls into the 'specialty engineering software' category. We build an enterprise ready tool for teams working with Apache Kafka (https://kpow.io https://kpow.io) and offer an hourly price. The deliverable is a single docker container (not a desktop app!) and right from the start, nearly three years now, we've been selling on the AWS Marketplace for 0.16c/hr: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-5jvke6codhrsm https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-5jvke6codhrsm We have a couple of pricing models, but on the consumption based model we stick to that clear, transparent hourly price. It's good for customers that choose that model, and good for us because we're engineers and we don't care for opaque enterprise sales practices. We do a fair number of enterprise sales too, they require a negotiation because metering usage at an enterprise level is rarely practical. Even then the price is some calculation of usage/value + support. Keeps it simple, lets us attack a big market as a small team and stay focused on technical delivery, shortens the sale/negotiation time, and our customers know they're basically paying the same price as anyone else.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  I'd rather not, but it's a specialty design/construction calculation software for the building industry. Userbase is ~1000 and the development effort is in the order of several hundred man years.
RachelF 5y ago
MS is pushing it's cloud version of Office heavily. I doubt there will be a desktop version by then, and if there is it will not have all the features of the Cloud 365 version. Azure and AWS already can bill by the second.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  There's no way they kill the desktop versions in 5 years. As of right now, the cloud versions don't have all of the features of the desktop versions.
- irjustin 5y ago
  Office365 Online is to compete against GDocs which GDocs has an incredible feature set for light/basic users. But, cloud Office is absolutely abysmal if you get away from the core line features or need to do anything semi-difficult. Online Word fails to faithfully reproduce complex layouts. Dealing with asian languages results in weird font inconsistencies as well as layout errors. Online Excel also fails in non-ASCII text. Complex Excel books that are already slow are even slower online. Of course, you can't access local resources if any book reaches outwards like that.
- retrac 5y ago
  The cloud cannot replace Office for contexts where the data is not allowed in the cloud. Physical custody of data remains a hard requirement for quite a few sectors. So does offline operation. It's difficult to imagine Microsoft simply writing off entire government departments around the world that are current customers. I wouldn't be too surprised if it still all moves to subscription pricing though.
Gigachad 5y ago
Imagine the stress put on the user to make sure they close the program the moment they are done with it or close it on their coffee break. This might make sense for services like aws but not user software..
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Well... I can tell you that engineers are not particularly stressed about turning off EC2 VMs they aren't using, or ever ever ever deleting useless junk from S3. When it's someone else's dollar... most people don't sweat it too hard.
  - salawat 5y ago
    Statements like this make me feel like I've stepped into bizarro world,.. because I obsess over that. To be clear though, this isn't wrong. The number of times I've gotten into shouting matches with people over deallocating cloud resources is not insignificant.
- 14 5y ago
  It would sure make it compelling for switching to the first competitor who offers a flat or monthly unlimited rate.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Yes. With monthly you are either using the software and paying. Or not using it and not paying. You wouldn't likely use it for one month and then have a month off before paying again. So there is no stress to optimise costs.

ccakes 5y ago

Super interesting! Can you share the name of the software?

akoster 5y ago
IIRC while on an internship at Broadcom, lots of EDA tools were utilized by sending a script to a (Sun Solaris?) grid compute cluster to save on license costs or due to licenses being billed per minute or cpu-minute. I do recall some internal "wall of shame" dashboard listing users with the most (idle?) minutes using an EDA tool.
- not2b 5y ago
  It is more likely that the company has a fixed number of licenses for some product, and is using a grid to maximize the amount of work they get out of those licenses. That is the usual practice with expensive EDA software, to the extent that the vendors will help customers set it up.
d_t_w 5y ago
Not the OP but our product falls into the 'specialty engineering software' category. We build an enterprise ready tool for teams working with Apache Kafka (https://kpow.io https://kpow.io) and offer an hourly price. The deliverable is a single docker container (not a desktop app!) and right from the start, nearly three years now, we've been selling on the AWS Marketplace for 0.16c/hr: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-5jvke6codhrsm https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-5jvke6codhrsm We have a couple of pricing models, but on the consumption based model we stick to that clear, transparent hourly price. It's good for customers that choose that model, and good for us because we're engineers and we don't care for opaque enterprise sales practices. We do a fair number of enterprise sales too, they require a negotiation because metering usage at an enterprise level is rarely practical. Even then the price is some calculation of usage/value + support. Keeps it simple, lets us attack a big market as a small team and stay focused on technical delivery, shortens the sale/negotiation time, and our customers know they're basically paying the same price as anyone else.
alkonaut 5y ago
I'd rather not, but it's a specialty design/construction calculation software for the building industry. Userbase is ~1000 and the development effort is in the order of several hundred man years.

RachelF 5y ago

MS is pushing it's cloud version of Office heavily. I doubt there will be a desktop version by then, and if there is it will not have all the features of the Cloud 365 version. Azure and AWS already can bill by the second.

maxerickson 5y ago
There's no way they kill the desktop versions in 5 years. As of right now, the cloud versions don't have all of the features of the desktop versions.
irjustin 5y ago
Office365 Online is to compete against GDocs which GDocs has an incredible feature set for light/basic users. But, cloud Office is absolutely abysmal if you get away from the core line features or need to do anything semi-difficult. Online Word fails to faithfully reproduce complex layouts. Dealing with asian languages results in weird font inconsistencies as well as layout errors. Online Excel also fails in non-ASCII text. Complex Excel books that are already slow are even slower online. Of course, you can't access local resources if any book reaches outwards like that.
retrac 5y ago
The cloud cannot replace Office for contexts where the data is not allowed in the cloud. Physical custody of data remains a hard requirement for quite a few sectors. So does offline operation. It's difficult to imagine Microsoft simply writing off entire government departments around the world that are current customers. I wouldn't be too surprised if it still all moves to subscription pricing though.

Gigachad 5y ago

Imagine the stress put on the user to make sure they close the program the moment they are done with it or close it on their coffee break. This might make sense for services like aws but not user software..

bpodgursky 5y ago
Well... I can tell you that engineers are not particularly stressed about turning off EC2 VMs they aren't using, or ever ever ever deleting useless junk from S3. When it's someone else's dollar... most people don't sweat it too hard.
- salawat 5y ago
  Statements like this make me feel like I've stepped into bizarro world,.. because I obsess over that. To be clear though, this isn't wrong. The number of times I've gotten into shouting matches with people over deallocating cloud resources is not insignificant.
14 5y ago
It would sure make it compelling for switching to the first competitor who offers a flat or monthly unlimited rate.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Yes. With monthly you are either using the software and paying. Or not using it and not paying. You wouldn't likely use it for one month and then have a month off before paying again. So there is no stress to optimise costs.