Michael Cusumano's Staying Power helped me immensely to understand SaaS, Cloud computing impact on software pricing. As an aside, Cusumano has written several books, the one I started with was the Business of Software. I used to tell stories of how the mind set of people from their upbringing in various nations led to their contributions to software industry in various capacities to my students. I gathered these stories from Cusumano's work on the business of software. Think Japan, France, Germany, USA, and now the east (for example India) and the rest and how they are contributing to this industry in various capacities based on their cultures and background...And from there we would pick up stories on outsourcing...
Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to get to know the authors and subject areas. Watching YouTube videos on their introductions on the books, Ted talks are becoming part of everyone's activities to catch up on knowledge. They are taking their due place in learning everywhere...
The power of platforms is due to its eco system (external) to be able to generate complementary products and services as a network effect. For example, how a best selling product can turn out into an industry platform consider Apple as an example.
We focus on cases such as Salesforce, Netflix, Amazon, Google and Facebook for discussions. Each one of them has a distinct flavor and interests different groups of students.
Salesforce as a CRM product and the most innovative company of the world (Forbes), Netflix interests every one as a movie rental company and so on.
What I try to do is to analyze the business model patterns here although I don't confuse them with the terms. But my questions center around the patterns.
For example, long tail pattern (selling less for more, offering a large number of products, but each sells less frequently...) - Netflix, Facebook are examples here.
For Multi sided platforms, consider Google. Different groups of customers interact on Google's platform to create value. How it makes money with advertising is an exercise here. Think advertisers, web surfers and content owners here.
Free itself is a business model pattern. Think Open source, Skype, google, Flickr...
A good resource (with its beautiful design and plenty of drawings) is Business Model generation by Alexander Osterwalder. He seems to be a researcher with quite a few articles I need to catch up on. The book is simple and attractive to read. Check it out in Amazon...
Software pricing changes, product costs and bundling due to SaaS and cloud computing is another area we discuss. I will be including my review of some of the Cusumano's articles for reading.
Social networking is discussed in the school/ university context. Students are asked to choose a couple of them and debate how they and the school can make use of these tools.
SEI at CMU (Software engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon) report on emerging technologies terminology is introduced to students. SEI at CMU are the pioneers for software engineering for the world. I encourage students to follow their contributions with extensive reports on matters of Software and methodologies. With more students coming from all walks of life, it is difficult to get them interested in topics such as these.
