Dan Farber kicked off the discussion yesterday around salesforce's new Unlimited Edition. Phil Wainewright weighs on with his view emerging SaaS pricing does not add up. It is a slippery slope.
Understand that Benioff and gang want to emulate software margins that Adobe and Microsoft have. The reality is buyers have learned over the years from negotiating with the masters - CA, Oracle - etc. There are checks and balances in the market as I wrote in Killing the Golden Goose?.
As a result software discounts now mirror software gross margins - 70%+. And soon salesforce.com's price book will be as thick as SAP's. And maybe Oracle will look attractive as it rolls out its own "all you can eat" pricing.
SaaS vendors have a small window of opportunity to redefine software. Not just end of software - end of traditional software games.
Update: Charles Zedlewski (on his personal blog, he works for SAP) adds his POV here
