Calling support have a negative impact on economy

I've just read an interesting piece. It talks about the fact, that when consumers call support centers, in general, all vendors do charge for those calls. It makes an approximate $50M in costs for just basic support people need.

That makes it quite intriguing information. The earlier business models of Open Source products were exactly like this - they were supposed to provide the product for free, and then charge for the support. And this would, or at least could, be a quite viable model.

Just look at those Red Hat's and MySQL's - they're in pretty good shape, aren't they? Those companies worth millions and billions, and it seems to be working for them for quite awhile. I believe that charging for support might be a good business.

On the other hand, if the consumer is in consideration, then it might not be that well. It actually adds a cost to the initial product price, and in effect it may take a substantial time and effort from customers to use his or her service (or device). But, after all, we have this way in economy for ages now. I just hope, that homeowner loans would not be required for dealing with that.

Just a thought.

Saas conference

Hi all

I was always wondering: how good SaaS model is? Quite good I guess. Here's the idea: you have some basic platform, such as browser. Then, you use it to run all sorts of applications (Gmail anyone?). Would that be the same thing? Would this model actually show us what SaaS idea is?

I haven't really thought about it yet that much. I just know a lot of vendors are looking into this area, because it allows to keep applications local and deliver them on demand. So, each delivery would bring revenue. That's a nice model, if I understand it correctly.

So, now there's a conference on the subject. SaaS Summit 2008 is a conference for all vendors in software as a service conference field. It will feature hundreds of executives from all kind of Web 2.0 vendors and companies, and will include many sessions where you could exchange knowledge and other sorts of information. The conference will include the following topics (cited):

What has to be done and by whom to accelerate the growth of Web application service delivery?

• Platform choices: Which & why?
• Web 2.0 psyche, scary?
• Will Enterprises embrace Web2.0?
• Integration behind the enterprise fire-wall, take II
• Web services, leverage or trap?
• What is so hard about on-demand on-boarding and billing?
• If you sell on-demand, shouldn't you be buying on-demand?

You should definitely check this out if you're in SaaS field. It is organized by OpSource and they seem to be very confident vendor in this field.

Note:: This post is sponsored

Web hosting search

OK, so now probably everyone knows that I'm looking for a hosting. I am talking about this for a long time already. So, while browsing the space I come over to interesting site - web hosting choice, which allow you to find a host service using your own search parameters.

So for example, I want a host with a decent amount of space (at least 1 G), decent amount of month transfer (at least 1000 G) and low price (say, for the sake of the argument, not higher than $10 a month). I entered those parameters into a search box on the main page, and viola! I got a list of host providers that answer those search parameters.

I'm going to dig a bit more in this, as I've already have found a problem: HostGator, which is first-ranked and featured provider on main site, seems to provide installation of Wordpress 1.0, which is by no means acceptable.

Just wanted to let you know, as it seems a bit promising.

Note: this post is sponsored