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I'm curious how you can make money on selling software as an appliance, and guarantee that a customer won't just replicate the system to have more servers?

by marquis 13y ago

GrinningFool 13y ago
It's becoming increasingly common with this kind of hybrid product that has both hosted and on-premises offerings. You either trust your customers or you don't. And if you want their business, you need to trust them. Sure, some will take advantage of this - but most will do the right thing. In addition, the customers that have requirements for this kind of offering are the last who are likely to skimp on payments. If a customer wants on-premise solutions, they do not want it calling home. Period, for any reason, not ever. These tend to be more regulated environments, where product licensing is taken seriously. [edit: object and predicate should match. or something like that.]
mattzito 13y ago
As the other reply said, to a certain extent you have to trust your customers. Big companies don't want to be exposed to liability - I know of a large organization that accidentally skimped on their license accounting for a database product (not Oracle) and got handed a $40m bill. They negotiated it down from there, but still, people lose their jobs over things like that. Along those lines, the contracts that customers sign should always include a clause that says you have the right to audit them if you believe they are not in compliance. Typically, you don't want to do that unless you absolutely have to, but it can be a useful tool when renegotiating enterprise "all-you-can-eat" support contracts. Still, there's technical stuff you can do. Log the IP address, hostname, hostid, mac address, and so on into your logs on startup. Then, when a customer submits a support case and uploads log files, store that info somewhere. Or create a "support package" that includes anonymous usage data and ask customers to upload. But the absolute last thing you want to do is deal with licenses and keys and hard limitations. All you'll do is piss off your customers when they hit their hard limit under a deadline at Friday at 4pm.
tteam 13y ago
We are providing On-Premises, File Share and Sync solution for Enterprises (www.getfilecloud.com). We have never seen a customers non complaint with licenses. We provide value to the customer and they pay for it. You need to trust your customers. There is no way around it.

I'm curious how you can make money on selling software as an appliance, and guarantee that a customer won't just replicate the system to have more servers?

by marquis 13y ago

I'm curious how you can make money on selling software as an appliance, and guarantee that a customer won't just replicate the system to have more servers?

GrinningFool 13y ago

It's becoming increasingly common with this kind of hybrid product that has both hosted and on-premises offerings. You either trust your customers or you don't. And if you want their business, you need to trust them. Sure, some will take advantage of this - but most will do the right thing. In addition, the customers that have requirements for this kind of offering are the last who are likely to skimp on payments. If a customer wants on-premise solutions, they do not want it calling home. Period, for any reason, not ever. These tend to be more regulated environments, where product licensing is taken seriously. [edit: object and predicate should match. or something like that.]

mattzito 13y ago

As the other reply said, to a certain extent you have to trust your customers. Big companies don't want to be exposed to liability - I know of a large organization that accidentally skimped on their license accounting for a database product (not Oracle) and got handed a $40m bill. They negotiated it down from there, but still, people lose their jobs over things like that. Along those lines, the contracts that customers sign should always include a clause that says you have the right to audit them if you believe they are not in compliance. Typically, you don't want to do that unless you absolutely have to, but it can be a useful tool when renegotiating enterprise "all-you-can-eat" support contracts. Still, there's technical stuff you can do. Log the IP address, hostname, hostid, mac address, and so on into your logs on startup. Then, when a customer submits a support case and uploads log files, store that info somewhere. Or create a "support package" that includes anonymous usage data and ask customers to upload. But the absolute last thing you want to do is deal with licenses and keys and hard limitations. All you'll do is piss off your customers when they hit their hard limit under a deadline at Friday at 4pm.

tteam 13y ago

We are providing On-Premises, File Share and Sync solution for Enterprises (www.getfilecloud.com). We have never seen a customers non complaint with licenses. We provide value to the customer and they pay for it. You need to trust your customers. There is no way around it.