From: andy
Reply-To: sales@itosn.com To: Purple Shirt Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE 7 Deluxe now vmware talk Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2000 13:07:30 +0100 Purple Shirt wrote:
From: Michael Hasenstein
To: `paul CC: Michael Smith , "Cleary, Mike" , suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE 7 Deluxe Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2000 18:30:50 -0700 `paul wrote:
On Tue, 08 Aug 2000, Michael Smith wrote about RE: [SLE] SuSE 7
As far as I recall professional comes with a vmware licence
If it's a full vmware licence then I'm sold.
If it had a full vmware license it would have to be significantly more expensive, or vmware (the company) would suddenly have a competing channel for its product which is less expensive then its other channels. The last time I checked (20 seconds ago) their price was $299 minimum. It means people would buy SuSE Linux from now on even if they really just want vmware. Sure, would be great for us, but I don't think the head of sales at vmware agrees.
-- Michael Hasenstein
First of all I like to congratulate you to your patience as well. I
people always forget to point out that you are not forced to buy SuSE if you don't like the way it is distributed.
I still disagree strongly on your analysis with the VMware license.
Even though I don't think SuSE should come with a full VMware lincense I have to disagree with you on the pricing and reasoning of you.
SuSE could include a 3-year VMware license with their professional distro and sell it at 120 dollars. Reason for this is that people repurchase
distribution over and over again. This means over time they repurchase
VMware license and therefore over time actually pay the equivalent of 299 for their vmware license.
Is this of advantage to SuSE and vmware? Yes and No. I am not sure if SuSE would sell as many Pro versions or less due to the increased price offering.
VMware definitely will win on this and increase their user base.
It's easy math looking at 3 year time frame.
A user buys 6 versions of SuSe pro and one version of vmware. Cost. 6*70+299=720 dollars total
A user buys 6 versions of SuSE pro with full vmware lincense included. Cost. 6*120=720 dollars total
Now I am an economist but of course in my sample the numbers don't sound convincing. You could tweak this though, the same way you can tweak Linux. You can increase the time frame. The larger SuSE+VMware commitment might in detail look also much more complicated. The VMware lincense may be a 3 year license instead of a 30 days one or an til-you-die licence.
I am just saying there is lots of options on deals for SuSE to make here with VMware for SuSE to become a big time reseller and make every SuSE Pro user also a VMware user.
I hope the guys in SuSE marketing are thinking about this. If not you can hire me. =)
mk
PS: Damn, I just got hit in the head it fells. I think if SuSE sold a SuSE version called Expert you be out of this endless discussion. Endless.
I can't believe I am giving all these marketing tips away for free. Here is how it works. SuSE makes big deal with VMware. SuSE combines a 3 year license of VMware with each SuSE Expert version. The SuSE customer buys a software on time package. The SuSE user will receive up to 6 versions of SuSE over the next 3 years with a full VMware license included. Every time the customer receives a version he pays 120 dollars. This is perfect and I tell you why. For one the customer stays up to date with Linux for 3 years. For another the customer also has the updated VMware version. Receives tons of handbooks and CDs and DVDs. Then he got the VMware license. The cost is distributed over 3 years so the customer doesn't recognize the larger cost as in buying a 299 dollar license by itself. I am pretty sure this could work. Basically this would bind users to SuSE ad VMware at the same time. If the users are unsatisfied they don't have to renew their 3 year contracts. Of course the details are difficult and you have to keep track that the users actually get 3 year VMware licenses and cannot extend their use. I believe you can set the price point at 100 dollars. I tell you why. In
Deluxe:: think the the the
end you will gain less money than the 299 dollar price for a single Vmware license but eventually people will like your product for the time frame and the service and I rather pay 100 bucks for SuSE with a Bam than 80 bucks for RedHat Pro with no bam. Users will stick with SuSE and therefore the loss you taking of 20 dollars on each SuSE version can be half way carried by VMware and halfway by SuSE and over time this loss deminishes towards zero the more customers you gain and the longer they stay with SuSE products.
________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
-- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq
Hello,
I bought my copy of student/hobbyist version of vmware for USD 99.00 rather than USD 299.00
Andy
Yes, I am aware that they "subsidize" students. This is another bundle deal. I wish people understand the business side a bit more. They like a less-rich student to experience the quality of their product. Over time you will be accustomed to the features in VMware and you will bond with the product. Hence when you are no student anymore you will tend to buy their product again and spend some serious dollars on them. SuSE works the same way. SuSE now sells SuSE Personal for the home user. They eventually hope a home user will become a professional user and in the end buy a SuSE Professional package where SuSE will be making more money of off them. The only goal you have in business is to sell somebody something they might need and tie them to you, but keep them happy(which Microsoft hasn't done) so they stay with you and spend money on you instead of your competitors. Every dollar spend on your products cannot be spend on a competitor's products. I may also say the real value or cost of a VMware license may be 15 dollars or 20 or 50. Nobody knows. The only reason they sell it at 299 is that the consumer interest doesn't warrant a cheaper sale. At this early stage of the business cycle "multiple OS on one system". If though there was 500 million Linux users who all also want to use Windows they could drop the price down to 50 bucks a license. Then you could cheaply bundle it with SuSE and everybody would be happy and you could still make profit. The increased sales make up for the loss in price. Can we open a mailing list suse-business@suse.com? =) I may also say I may be wrong in some of my statements but somewhere in there may be a deal it is just time until somebody finds it. Remember they also said you can't make money off of a free operating system. And didn't we prove the majority wrong on that one. mk ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq