Novell launches SW Pricing program

To help organizations meet the growing demand from their customers and

constituents for services via the Internet, Novell has launched a software

pricing program that makes such services more affordable by tailoring pricing to

the type of end-user.

Now, in addition to traditional pricing for an organization’s employee

users, Novell offers significantly discounted ‘Business-to-Consumer’ and

‘Government-to-Citizen’ user license pricing.

Novell’s pricing program creates two new categories of discounted user

licenses to make affordable Web services available to very large user

communities. While Novell’s standard user license remains the license for

employees and suppliers, the Business-to-Consumer user license price is only 25

percent of the standard user license and the Government-to-Citizen user license

is only 10 percent of the standard price. For all three categories, Novell

charges based on the number of individual users of a software service, not the

number of computing devices connected to the network.

Novell’s approach avoids the steep license penalties assessed by some other

major vendors when they require a license for each computer or PDA used to

access a software service.

Novell’s new license pricing will help organizations reduce costs and give

them significant competitive value in the markets they serve. The

Business-to-Consumer and Government-to-Citizen licenses will make it easier for

businesses and government agencies to provide customers and citizens with secure

access to services and information such as bank accounts or government records.

“Expensive software licensing models have prevented organizations from

affordably extending services to customers across the Web,” said Chris Stone,

Vice Chairman, Office of the CEO, Novell. “Novell is changing this by

providing a significant opportunity for businesses who are offering customers

software services over the Internet and to government agencies who offer such

services to citizens. Other major vendors have licensing plans that make

Internet solutions impractical because license fees are the same for both

employee and customer use of a software service, despite vastly different levels

of usage and benefits,” he added.

Cyber News Service