3 Questions, Roger Greene, Ipswitch
Published for the Week Of July 26, 2004
CRN:
A lot of enterprise vendors are scaling their solutions for small businesses. As a small-business software vendor, what’s your take on that?
GREENE: Enterprise software companies have products they have developed to meet the needs of enterprise customers. They think if they just take a few features out, it will appeal to small businesses. In reality, a small-business customer doesn’t need one-tenth of an enterprise software product. They need a product that is designed specifically for their needs.
CRN: What is fundamentally different about their needs?
GREENE: For something like an e-mail client, the needs are the same. But on the server side, look at the complexity of managing the system.
In an enterprise, you can have a system that works very well for a large number of clients but [is] a complete nightmare to administer. In a small business, you don’t have the resources available to do that intensive administration. So there is a really high value placed on software that goes in easily, takes minimal time to administer and provides just the functionality they need.
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CRN: You didn’t mention price. Isn’t this market all about price?
GREENE: Price isn’t the key factor. First, small companies look for a solution to their problem. Only after that is determined do they look at whether it is appropriately priced.