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SmartBear introduces new pricing flexibility schemes
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 25 August 2010, 19:58 IST
Bangalore: In an effort to build its channel capacity, SmartBear Software is offering a software suite that offers partners greater margin flexibility and more competitive pricing than competitors, reports Jeff Jedras from itbusiness.
The American company began in 1999 as Automated QA Corp. It was acquired in 2007 by an investment group led by current SmartBear president Derek Langone, who merged them with Smart Bear Software. A year later, they were merged with Pragmatic Software.
Langone said this led to three fairly siloed operations operating under one umbrella. Last month, all three firms were formally merged under the SmartBear brand, with consolidated marketing and back office functions and one cohesive go-to-market.
The company has three primary product offerings. It offers quality assurance tools for software quality assurance, developer testing and performance profiling, developer-oriented tools for peer code review, and tools for managing the software development lifecycle. Langone said they continue to offer the software as point solutions, rather than a suite, so users can choose the pieces that are right for them.
The development and test management is offered in a hosted model, but the others are offered solely as on-premise solutions, although SaaS versions are in development.
"Customer demand has just really started to gel (for SaaS)," said Langone. "They reason it's not already offered in a hosted model is, generally, security concerns. With a hosted model companies would have to move source-code off site."
This likely wouldn't concern smaller companies, said Langone, but it's a deal-breaker for some of SmartBear's larger customers, which is why it will offer the choice of on-premise or SaaS.
Today, SmartBear's business is a mix of direct and indirect, with about 30 per cent of its business coming through the channel. However, Langone said the channel is where SmartBear is investing most of its resources, looking to recruit partners, build capacity and drive greater than 50 per cent of its revenue through the channel.