Where this runs into trouble is where some partners are given exclusive or special license, and in turn those partners have special responsibilities in those markets. Some examples in the tech market are localization, support and returns management.  Here is a very concrete example. Mirye Software is the exclusive English publisher of Shade 3D, one of the oldest 3D products on the market today and the dominant 3D modeling, animation and rendering product in Japan. Some responsibilities of Mirye include translating and localizing Shade into English, marketing Shade, providing technical support to English speaking Shade customers and also managing channel issues for Shade. Now if E Frontier began selling an English capable version into China, and the Chinese partners sold these abroad, Mirye could easily be saddled with a customer base to support (costs) without actually having made the original sale.

Some games companies have come up with various tricks to deal with these problems. For example, if you bought a game import outside of your region and go to activate your game online, it would most likely fail, because the game company can match your region with the type of activation code you have. However this has problems too. Lets say I purchase a game in English, and want my friend who is living abroad in China to be able to play it. He may have a US residence, and even US credit cards, but there could be some indicator that shows his origin outside of the US – and he doesn’t want to play the Chinese version of the game because he can’t read Chinese. It is the same logic as the also flawed regional encoding system of DVDs to DVD players.

I can fully understand the problem from a vendor perspective.  Also – this may also hide something more insidious when applied to the medical and pharmaceutical industries which are doing their best to stop the gray marketing of their products into the United States.  I don’t have an easy solution to this – the courts have so far applied a very blunt and damaging instrument to it.

The nice thing about using a service like MacZot is that it gets customers onto your update/upgrade plan, usually in large batches. Mirye Software ran a deal on MacZot a few weeks ago on Shade Designer.

In running these types of campaigns, there are a few considerations -

Is there a good chance you’ll get an upsell later?

This can be on renewals or on upgrades. You should carefully differentiate these two – a renewal extends the current license for a specific amount of time, compared to an upgrade that lets a customer move to a higher level of product.

If you have a short initial renewal period and/or desirable higher levels, then it’s a really good investment. For us, it was a really good for Shade Designer because the most popular version of Shade is Shade Standard, which is a $200 upgrade.

There isn’t a renewal option on Shade Designer – once you acquire it, if you want to get the next version of Shade Designer, you need to buy it again.

Do you get a cross sell opportunity?

Once you sell to a customer, it is usually that much easier to sell them something else. When we sold Shade Designer, we had subsequent sales of content, including two 3D characters Hanako and Tully, each of which run for about $49. These products are desirable because character design is extremely difficult and these are ready to use characters for 3D artwork.

Does the promotion cause long term devaluation of your product?

This is a bit harder. If you keep your promotion term down to two weeks or less and the exposure narrowed to a specific group – probably no problem. If it is longer than this and, you also have sales channels, you can see some push back from those channels because they will begin to see a reduction in sales – this is where price protection issues come up.

If your product is constantly on sale, then using a service like MacZot will contribute to the perception of devaluation. Also, along with devaluation, you also increase the risk that customers will expect to buy on sale and simply wait until a new sale pops up.

Does your product require intensive support?

If you have a product that requires a lot of support and you don’t have a separate way to charge for it (or a way to keep your costs very low), then you are setting yourself up to lose. A good way to offset this is if you already have developed a community based support system – forum, group or mailing list.

The second was to try to log into their Community Site and ask. Fortunately it is possible to read their community site, which is how I found the page above; this also was an epic fail because the bridge between My Verizon and the community site doesn’t accept my credentials.  This was very odd since I am already logged into their main My Verizon site, but it means their bridge between their back end business apps and their Lithium based support site is crap.

Now you might be thinking  – hmmm, just take your lunch and send them an email using their Contact form. No dice there. You see, as soon as you select Internet > Technical Support, the form automatically pushes you to their main support FAQ page, not allowing you to submit a support request form. You cannot get support through the Support Request Form.

Okay then – they have Live Chat! Lets try that. Clicking on the Live Chat option on their website, you are immediately informed that the service is not available.

If you check that link above, you can see the responses of other customers who are seeing the blame game being played out between Blizzard and Verizon, which of course is nonsense since customers are chiming in who have nothing to do with Blizzard and World of Warcraft.

Almost every company hates support calls because they cost money.  Some will argue that its an opportunity to get feedback from your customers – and yes, that is very useful – if there is a way for that information to reach decision makers in the company. With very large, commodity service companies though, its a questionable return. Actually adding new, unique or interesting services that differentiate you from the other guy means a change in corporate strategy – even if its something very small.  Management likely doesn’t want to hear it, because change can be very costly, and if the change doesn’t bring back a huge financial return then its a death sentence for the executive or manager that tries to change the status quo.

Now Verizon is huge, with complex regional issues, partners, regulations – so for every and any location there are differing rules. Verizon could put this to use though, by offering a System Status link to any account that is regionally linked. As soon as the first few irritated Oregonians began calling in and they diagnose there is a problem, they could have updated a region based status page with relevant information – and put up an alert as soon as you log into your My Verizon account to let you know that something is affecting you right now. Very simple, and chances are your discount ISP or service provider already does something like this.  That would reduce their touch costs significantly.

I think Michael is going to have a lot of heartache in 2010. MySQL AB had an extremely aggressive sales force and rather difficult to understand licensing that, in combination, generated revenues for MySQL AB from confused executives at development companies and end user companies who became enamored with MySQL because it was free – but later found it wasn’t free for their commerical endeavors. Oracle certainly has an aggressive sales force, but the mindset is different. The sort of bait and switch mentality for licensing isn’t a part of the Oracle way of doing things – and I can see some of Michael’s fears coming true. Prices will very likely go up, up, up. The software license will probably not change for a while – at least until the worries of government probes are behind them.

Legitimate search engines go ahead and search sites that, had a human actually visited the site, they’d know immediately is a warez site. They index the stolen material.

Next, more thieves come along, do legitimate searches, then go to the pirate site after they’ve found what they are looking. They download the intellectual property, and they also view the ads. The site owners benefit from the click throughs and page views (however the ad network compensates) generated by the pirate activity. The search engine provider benefits because they are being used to track down the stolen property and get to show ads in the process.

The double losers are the advertisers as well as the intellectual property owners. Advertisers lose because their expectation is that their ads will be matched to sites that are not engaging in theft. Those who use pirate sites may not be the demographic they are looking for when they set up their ads.

The intellectual property owners lose in many ways. There is the actual theft of the intellectual property itself. Secondarily, because their stolen property is being indexed and receiving lots of hits through search engines, the appearance of stolen versions in search engines can make it harder to find the legitimate versions of the product.

If you think this is just a bunch of kids ripping off big music companies you aren’t taking into account the small art and design houses that also create music and designs for a living. Just check out all of the models listed on sites such as DAZ 3D, Content Paradise or Renderosity, created by singular artists; now search for individually named models.

Well, there has been some. Android has had its first generation run on hardware, and its generally known that Intel and Google have been working together on getting a variant of Android to run on netbooks. With engineers at one end of the table and marketers at the other end, it should be no surprise that someone would simply ask why they weren’t doing it.

Android is an amazing accomplishment but there is far more functionality you could have on a netbook and – after all – Windows XP Home is already finding a new home on the hardware platform. Either Android has to stand against Windows XP Home or it needs a bigger brother that can.

I think Google Chrome OS won’t blow Windows XP Home out of the water in terms of functionality. What it will do however is create a new Linux based ecosystem which we haven’t seen before – and this will happen because Google will be forced to make this a Linux  that is usable by the same customers who already own Windows XP. They have to – there is plenty of evidence in retail that the return rate of netbooks is much higher for the Linux based ones, and that customers are returning them to exchange them for the Windows based ones. Google Chrome OS has a battleground, and that is ownership of the blooming netbook platform.

Oracle hasn’t been shy about acquiring open source databases, such as it did with SleepyCat – Sleepy Cat’s CEO even said it was acquired to be a counter to MySQL in 2005. Since that time though, it has also invested in both deployment on Linux and in Java development as a means to deliver database applications. With OpenSolaris and the opening of Java, Sun made a brave attempt to make push its operating system in front of the open source crowd. We may never know what would have happened if IBM had acquired Sun, but you can be certain that Larry Ellision and his friends had a few ideas and didn’t like what they came up with.  With the Sun acquisition, Oracle now has control over a cross-platform application deployment system as well as an extremely stable operating system – both items that counter Microsoft more than IBM.

I am sure the few remaining employees from MySQL that haven’t left Sun already will have more to think about – that is, the ones that didn’t follow Michael Widenius, the original creator of the MySQL database system, out the door. According to Monty, Sun rushed out MySQL 5.1 – a typical business tactic to pull in as much revenue as possible after splurging $1 billion to acquire MySQL.

The message as I heard it was – don’t look back, lets step forward together. As an African-American, he didn’t negate the history of African Americans in the United States, nor did he set aside the history that some associate only with white America. What I heard was a harmonized blending, as multi-cultural and multi-racial as the man himself. It is the message of the melting pot of America, at least the positive message as I heard it in my childhood. To me, the melting pot was never about a watering down or chaotic blending of otherwise conflicting values and experiences, but allowing the very best to come together without being subordinated or negated.

Does this have anything to do with software? Sure it does. The American culture and value of open dialog and negotiation and the value placed on personal competitiveness and creativity, combined with a government that allows the easy formation of new business is why America continues to be the birthplace of great software. It isn’t that great software cannot come from someplace else; the American experience nurtures great software because it nurtures the perfect blend of innovation.

I am having a hard time remembering the last product I purchased at a Circuit City, whereas I remember fondly the last two iMacs I purchased at CompUSA. Proactive International has handled many cross platform products over the years, which means we’ve always had to have a Mac available. While local Mac specialist stores like The Mac Store were left to sell nothing but their spleen while Apple Stores had plenty of iMacs, and strangely, so did the CompUSA nearby. It is hard to remember what I purchased at Circuit City as I stopped shopping there after many, many visits in which advertised products were never available on shelves.

But I will credit Circuit City in that the few I visited over the last few years carried a reasonable selection of software titles, and not just games, Windows and a handful of utility or anti-virus programs. And for that, I will mourn the death of Circuit City as a loss of one more venue for software to reach end users. The narrowing of the software channel has had a profound impact on software innovation.

No, I’m not over dramatizing, and yes, I recognize that Circuit City probably sourced its software from Ingram or Navarre, just like everyone else (with some exceptions like Frys ). Even though Circuit City carried the same stuff as everyone else, a retail presence offers some hope for change because it offered more choices for purchase. Some developers are late to recognize what this means.

But I’ll give credit to iPhone developer wake up. iPhone developers, many of which were Mac developers and strong platform supporters of all things Apple, are becoming less enchanted by having only a single venue for selling their applications. While I was at MacWorld 2009, many iPhone developers I talked to had nothing but complaints to level about the single venue of the iPhone App Store for iPhone applications The realization only seems to be setting in over the last several months that having a single venue for sales means customers have less reason to visit your website. You are in a much better position if you already have a great Mac application and therefore can upsell your customers to your iPhone solution. But doing that, you need to already have other applications plus some knowledge of marketing and business development. Combine lack of pre-existing market presence with a narrowness of channel and what do you get?

The retail software market has been headed in that direction for some time now. To reach most retailers, you have to get your software product into a pick-and-pack distributor like Ingram Micro or Navarre; most retailers would rather pass over an order than have to order directly from a vendor. But there’s been some changes in the distribution scene which are particularly irksome to new vendors.

If you are a one product company, or you have a product which isn’t a perfect fit for retail, more often than not, Ingram or Navarre will direct you to engage an aggregate vendor. This is a company that puts your products on their pre-existing catalog with the distributors, to which you pay a (very steep for new vendors) monthly fee and a percentage of sales. This is in addition to the percentage taken by the distributor.

So getting into Circuit City hasn’t been a picnic, but there was a promise there that is no longer available.

Benefits of Mirye Runtime Revolution Issue Format

The new release format offers the following benefits:

• Additional, Permanent Benefits. These are benefits that customers receive regardless of when they are announced. With this first issue, Studio and Enterprise customers receive Valentina for Revolution 3.1 ADK Advanced, the ultra fast database toolkit for Revolution.
• Limited, Timed Benefits. These benefits are only available if you download them within the limited time. With this first issue, Media, Studio and Enterprise customers receive the Business as Unusual Volume 1 collection of 20 royalty free soundtracks.
• News and Articles. With each release, there will be news, articles and tips offered to help enhance your use of Revolution.
• Special Offers. You can get special member offers for other, or third party products that will enhance your use of Revolution.

The Why Behind Mirye Runtime Revolution Format Change

Mirye Runtime Revolution is a professional tool for creating and deploying cross platform applications on all major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. In many respects, it overlaps and competes with the likes of Adobe Director, REAL Software REALbasic, MS Visual Basic, Java and even Adobe Flash or Microsoft’s .net framework.

Mirye Runtime Revolution overlaps with REALbasic, Java and .net framework in that it can deploy to multiple operating systems using mostly the same code base. But that simply describes features in the last step of a work flow pipeline – not the entire pipeline of a release.

Designers that have experience with Adobe Director, Flash or Microsoft’s new Expression more likely to recognize the pipeline, because these products also excel in aggregating combinations of audio, video and graphics assets. These are elements that are usually developed by someone else and upstream in the workflow pipeline.

Teams though can share more than just assets – but the knowledge of how to best exploit the use of those assets at each point in the work flow.

This brings us back to the format change and the question: Is Mirye Runtime Revolution only a deployment technology, or does it encompass the aggregated assets and knowledge? Even if you are a weekend developer and you wear all the hats of artist, layout designer, sound technician and coder, an additional benefit at any point in your work flow pipeline provides benefits to the entire project.

This brings us back to our new issues format. By providing ongoing knowledge and benefits in an magazine-like issue format – expanded beyond a software only update – a release can deliver benefits that are more timely, and benefit your entire work flow.