sales

Spurred by sales of Microsoft's Office 2007, the software market hit its highest level since 1999, according to a report released Wednesday by the NPD Group.

Overall, the U.S. non-game PC software market at retail stores totaled $3.3 billion in 2007, a 15 percent increase over the $2.9 billion generated in 2006. The rise is even more notable, as sales had been essentially flat from 2000 through 2006.

But, a whole lot of that is due to Microsoft, largely because of Office, but also because of Vista's debut. According to NPD's Chris Swenson, 80 … Read more

You might be tempted by the low, low prices, but going-out-of-business sales might come back to haunt you in the form of identity theft, says researcher Neal Krawetz of Hacker Factor. He posted a blog citing concerns over CompUSA closing all of its 103 stores. Bottom line: there currently is no regulation of or accountability for the sale of point-of-sale hardware that could contain credit card information and/or customer and corporate information.

Krawetz, who last year warned of existing vulnerabilities in how large chain stores regularly collect and store credit card information, says that customers need to be wary … Read more

I missed this little bit of news at the time, but it's worth passing along here, if only for completeness.

In a brief interview published on New Year's Eve by Laptop magazine, One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte said total XO-1 laptop shipments during the organization's "Give One, Get One" promotion were expected to be between 150,000 and 170,000 units.

A few days later, The New York Times reported that OLPC announced a more precise figure: 167,000 laptops. (Unfortunately, I can't locate the OLPC announcement itself; it isn't on … Read more

Talk with John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM, and he'll tell you that his website is one of his most valuable business tools. It's often the beginning point to a customer relationship and is also often the source of a deal closing. Few understand web strategy as well as SugarCRM.

JBoss might well be among that few. I was reading through an internal presentation from JBoss and continually find myself impressed by how well Marc, Rob, Bob, and the others grok'd the importance of the web to their business. JBoss knew who was hitting its website, what they were doing there, and how to nurture that initial interest into a sale.

Take a look at the slide to the right. IBM is the master of selling to the CIO and pushing its technology down into an enterprise. Open source generally works in the opposite fashion. You start with the developer/architect and "bottom-up" adoption of technology until it's pervasive enough to catch the CIO's attention...and her wallet.… Read more

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, kicking off the 2007 holiday-shopping season...apparently in full force.

As you are probably aware, Black Friday is the term in the U.S. for retail shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday refers to online shopping on the Monday following Thanksgiving.

These have become milestone shopping days that retailers use as indicators for the health of the holiday-shopping season. While they are often referred to as the busiest or even biggest shopping days, they are quite often trumped by other days leading up to Christmas.

Retail, probably more … Read more

I've written before on the remarkable JBoss revenue machine. As I learn more about its operations, the more impressed I become.

First off, for those who think that open source is a high-volume, low-ASP (Average Sales Price) game, you've obviously never worked for an open-source company. At least, not long enough. To the right you can see JBoss' ASP/Average Deal Size over time*, which maps very closely to my direct, personal experience with Alfresco and the other open-source companies I advise.

This graphic shows JBoss moving from isolated, departmental implementations (low dollars) to company-wide deployments (big dollars). This is the natural progression for any successful commercial open-source project. Invade the enterprise through free downloads and let the positive experience percolate throughout an enterprise until the CIO pushes a site-wide license.… Read more

Dell announced on Wednesday that it's offering Spanish-language sales and support to U.S. consumers.

The computer maker, through its Spanish-language sales-and-support site and toll-free number, provides full-service sales support, customer service, and financing and financial documentation in Spanish.

The move, designed to help the company tap into rapidly shifting demographic changes, comes roughly six months after the company launched a Spanish-language blog, where its management, customer care, engineering, and personnel departments could gather customer input and discuss technology trends.

In the United States, an estimated 32.2 million households, with residents ages 5 and older, speak Spanish in … Read more

I've been hearing more and more that proprietary companies are fighting back against open-source companies by giving away their software. "We can compete with free!" they chortle as they discount their license fees to zero, occasionally winning deals (with customers who don't yet fully understand that open source is far more than price tag).

But with every deal they win on these terms, they lose. Their cost structure can't support giving away million-dollar deals that cost (literally, at times) a million dollars to close. Talking with a friend at Oracle, he tells me they expend upwards of 18 months and 100 or so people working on their million-dollar deals.

In other words, they spend money like crazy so that they can win the deal and hold onto that maintenance revenue.… Read more

Updated Oct. 23, 11:50 a.m.; details at bottom.

What if you threw a World Series and no one came because they couldn't buy tickets?

That is the dilemma facing the Colorado Rockies on Monday after the baseball team suspended online ticket sales because servers were overwhelmed by traffic.

"We are as frustrated and disappointed as (fans) are," Jay Alves told The Denver Post, adding that team officials had no idea so many people would try to use the Web site.

The team said it would honor the several hundred tickets already sold but it's … Read more