How the Other Half BuysHow the Other Half Buys

In the Web world, free/near-free and good enough is supposed to trump more costly and high-function.

I recently ran across an interesting blog post from a company called HttpWatch: "Seven Reasons Why Our iOS App Costs $99.99." In this unsigned post, the company explains why its business-grade app costs "100x more than Angry Birds," in the process laying bare many of the challenges and misconceptions that now abound in the world of IT consumerization, BYOD, and technology commoditization.

The company describes its app as "an HTTP sniffer for IE, Firefox, iPhone & iPad that provides new insights into how your website loads and performs." The blog post quotes some feedback from potential users who love the tool but just can't reconcile themselves to the cost. In the process of responding to these concerns, the company gives a mini-tutorial on the economics of business-grade software development and sales/support--something that enterprise decision-makers are familiar with, but that your average WordPress hobbyist blogger probably hasn't thought too much about.

In pointing out that "This isn't a mass-market app," the company notes, "The market for paid apps that are aimed at a technical audience like HttpWatch is very small compared to gaming apps like Angry Birds or apps with general appeal like Paper.

"It's unreasonable to expect narrow market apps to receive the development attention they deserve if they sell for just a few dollars," they continue. "The app store is littered with great apps that have never been updated for the iPhone 5 screen size or iOS 7 because they don't generate enough revenue to make it worthwhile."

They've also got some really interesting charts on price elasticity, and what they found when they tried dropping the price to $19.99 and $9.99.

This post struck a chord with me because I think that as we've talked about some of the new software-based developments in enterprise communications--especially WebRTC--the focus tends to be on what you can do. And what you can do with WebRTC is pretty interesting. But for enterprises, the issue isn't what you can do, so much as what you intend to do--how you, as a software developer, intend to provide value that an enterprise can invest in. Enterprises can't and shouldn't turn on a dime or divest themselves of assets that still provide value--which may mean "sweating" assets that might be considered obsolete. That's pretty much the exact opposite of the consumer App Store model.

One theme that came up when we talked with attendees at Enterprise Connect Orlando last spring was their increasing struggles with patching and version control for communications-related software that seems to get updated more frequently than ever. Working with vendors to keep software current is going to be an increasingly challenging task in enterprise communications. And that's in today's environment, with fairly well-managed upgrade cycles, which nevertheless represent a challenge as the number of software providers grows. And that's also only considering enterprise-driven software implementations; as the HttpWatch post noted, a BYOD user base is likely to be a chaotic environment for support of multitudes of software apps implemented in an ad hoc, even idiosyncratic fashion.

In the Web world, free/near-free and good enough is supposed to trump more costly and high-function. But the App Store model that HttpWatch struggles against lays bare the flaw for enterprises: It's hard enough keeping up with a moderately-paced software upgrade schedule, for an organization that's dealing with numerous applications and platforms. It's literally not feasible for an enterprise to move to a Kleenex model of application consumption for the enterprise.

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