Bundling software with a twist, but how to market

Idea Pitches
#1

I was reading a medium article post (linked below) and today or yesterday i was reading here and the idea occurred to me about bundling On-Premise versions of SaaS software but as a service.

The post on here about SaaS vs On-Prem (apologies i will add the link after writing this post) made think about when AppSumo (now SumoMe) first started out they sometimes bundled apps to sell with a count down etc etc.

So i thought about combining the 2 thought streams , a Managed on-premises bundling of apps for people to purchase as a whole.
i.e. purchase a hosted jira, TeamCity, OctopusDeploy …

Note it doesn’t have to be build stuff that’s just my fall back products
Not sure how whee to market but …

Comments , Feedback

medium link not me or anything to do with me.

1 Like
#2

I believe such bundles are marketed as “appliances” – a ready-to-use servers with all required packages installed. Google search appliance comes in mind, some routers are distributed as appliances… only these days the appliance doesn’t have to be real; it could be a VMware image, for instance.

Back in some days PHP+Apache+MySQL was distributed as a package to install on Windows (targeted at PHP developers) … JIRA in its early versions was delivered as a Tomcat+DB+JIRA itself.

… So the model is not exactly new, and I’d say it is proven.

Having said that, in the context of the post you provided, a bundle is not disrupting SaaS; it still competes with on-premise applications. SaaS vendors will still have a cost of ownership edge over such a bundled solution; for instance, Atlassian provides a bundle of their applications together online - with the same goal to reduce buyers integration pains, but at a fraction of a cost you may be able to charge for a on-premise bundle profitably.

#3

I’m the author of that post. Thanks for sharing it. :wink:

SaaS has the potential to be disrupted if the customer really, really wants:

  • a different form factor
  • a different pricing / licensing model

This will differ from industry to industry.

To answer your question I’ll ask you a question:

Have you observed the pain you’re trying to fix? Do you know people in your market who really really want it?

(I talk about this more in today’s newsletter: https://justinjackson.ca/change/)