A Michelangelo should not charge Sistine Chapel rates...

...for painting a farmer's barn".

As I was reviewing old Gartner notes I wrote in the 90s for this post, I stumbled across the quote above I had used in a report in 1998. It was from a ruling at a US Circuit Court.

Brian Sommer explaining salesforce.com's success says "Benioff's more right than even he knows". I would change the statement to say "Benioff's priced more right than he even knows". Without even trying to, he has raised awareness about the economics of enterprise software - and also hosting, apps maintenance, upgrades. The software and related infrastructure has been around for a decade or two and implemented and supported thousands of times. Certainly not one-off, artistic stuff.

Now comes Google Apps, the premier version. $ 50 a user a year. Forget the apps - get it just for the 10 GB of storage with a 99.9 % SLA. Google is similarly providing a lens that not just Microsoft applications, but traditional hosting, storage etc are over priced. OK, so concerns about integration with active directory, encryption, and legal concerns about emails being sub-poenaed will preclude some companies from seriously considering Google Apps, but no reason why they cannot use it as a benchmark when they negotiate with HP or CSC.

There are plenty of enterprise areas which are "barns" and crying out for SaaS, SaCS and Utility pricing.

So tell your incumbent vendors they are troppo caro. With the money you save you can afford to go see the Sistine Chapel. Many times. Even on a weak dollar.