Comments on: Thinking Out Loud – How will seat pricing work in the cloud? http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud JOHNMWILLIS BLOG Sat, 20 Feb 2010 03:25:51 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Bookmarks about Vendor http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-35706 Bookmarks about Vendor Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:00:26 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/?p=1101#comment-35706 [...] - bookmarked by 3 members originally found by jaimexx14 on 2008-12-22 Thinking Out Loud - How will seat pricing work in the cloud? http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/ - [...] [...] – bookmarked by 3 members originally found by jaimexx14 on 2008-12-22 Thinking Out Loud – How will seat pricing work in the cloud? http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/ – [...]

]]> By: Reuben Swartz http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-11037 Reuben Swartz Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:15:00 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/?p=1101#comment-11037 Software vendors have long relied on pricing mechanisms that were "easy to count" instead of "reflecting value." Cloud computing, SaaS, and even multicore CPUs have blown up these models. (We're actually doing a webinar on SaaS pricing models on July 30-- registration links available from our website for those interested.) Software vendors have long relied on pricing mechanisms that were “easy to count” instead of “reflecting value.” Cloud computing, SaaS, and even multicore CPUs have blown up these models.

(We’re actually doing a webinar on SaaS pricing models on July 30– registration links available from our website for those interested.)

]]> By: John http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-10861 John Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:28:07 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/?p=1101#comment-10861 Chris, The problem is that there are going to be so many variations of platforms (private, public, cloud, non cloud, ...). It is going to be very difficult for vendors to keep track. It is already a nightmare for IBM with virtualization. Also not all clouds are going to be SP based. However, I do agree some kind of metering is the only thing that can make sense ... unless .. everything becomes open source and free :) Thanks John Chris,

The problem is that there are going to be so many variations of platforms (private, public, cloud, non cloud, …). It is going to be very difficult for vendors to keep track. It is already a nightmare for IBM with virtualization. Also not all clouds are going to be SP based.

However, I do agree some kind of metering is the only thing that can make sense … unless .. everything becomes open source and free :)

Thanks
John

]]> By: ArcGIS Server Cloud Licensing « The Memory Leak http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-10843 ArcGIS Server Cloud Licensing « The Memory Leak Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:09:02 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/?p=1101#comment-10843 [...] Out Loud has a good post about the difficulty of adapting per-cpu licensing models to the [...] [...] Out Loud has a good post about the difficulty of adapting per-cpu licensing models to the [...]

]]> By: Chris Sears http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-10777 Chris Sears Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:57:57 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/?p=1101#comment-10777 Perhaps vendors will just move to a more cloud-friendly CPU and time-based licensing, like logical CPU hours. This would be easy enough to track since EC2 and similar services are already doing the time and CPU accounting. If necessary, a licensed component could "call home" or contact a local license tracking service when starting up and shutting down to provide an external metering system. There is some president for licensing moving in this direction. Both Microsoft and VMWare offer service provider licensing where companies track their own license usage and just pay for what they use each month. Monthly license charges make sense for service providers (like hosting companies) because they usually bill their customers on a monthly basis. For clouds, hours (or fractions of hours) are the new time quantum. It seems reasonable that they would just extend the existing SP licensing to hourly billing. Perhaps vendors will just move to a more cloud-friendly CPU and time-based licensing, like logical CPU hours. This would be easy enough to track since EC2 and similar services are already doing the time and CPU accounting.

If necessary, a licensed component could “call home” or contact a local license tracking service when starting up and shutting down to provide an external metering system.

There is some president for licensing moving in this direction. Both Microsoft and VMWare offer service provider licensing where companies track their own license usage and just pay for what they use each month. Monthly license charges make sense for service providers (like hosting companies) because they usually bill their customers on a monthly basis. For clouds, hours (or fractions of hours) are the new time quantum. It seems reasonable that they would just extend the existing SP licensing to hourly billing.

]]> By: Benjamin Reed http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/thinking-out-loud-how-will-seat-pricing-work-in-the-cloud/comment-page-1/#comment-10735 Benjamin Reed Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:54:13 +0000 http://www.johnmwillis.com/?p=1101#comment-10735 I can at least kind of answer for Tarus -- the funny thing about our (OpenNMS Group's) pricing model is we don't *care* how many servers you run on. We only care about the bandwidth between us and you, the customer, and our pricing reflects it. If you're a small shop and only have one or two admins who need to open tickets, you can get the basic support contract. If you have larger needs, you tend to have more staff who need to be able to open tickets (or if you are using the more complex, esoteric features of OpenNMS not covered under basic support) and you get enterprise support. It's fair for the customer (there's no artificial fiddling of resources on the customer's part just to make the support contract happy), It's self-regulating, and it keeps per-node, per-cloud, or per-whatever-processing-measurement out of the equation. I can at least kind of answer for Tarus — the funny thing about our (OpenNMS Group’s) pricing model is we don’t *care* how many servers you run on. We only care about the bandwidth between us and you, the customer, and our pricing reflects it.

If you’re a small shop and only have one or two admins who need to open tickets, you can get the basic support contract. If you have larger needs, you tend to have more staff who need to be able to open tickets (or if you are using the more complex, esoteric features of OpenNMS not covered under basic support) and you get enterprise support.

It’s fair for the customer (there’s no artificial fiddling of resources on the customer’s part just to make the support contract happy), It’s self-regulating, and it keeps per-node, per-cloud, or per-whatever-processing-measurement out of the equation.

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