I'm very pleased to report that Easy Assets .NET local install version is very close to "going gold". I thought I'd take this time to talk about the final pricing scheme I've come up with (thanks to a lot of thought and feedback from the IT community) and the importance of wrapping things up properly.
Pricing (and identifying your customers)
Originally, I was going to make only one version and have it be source included. After much time and debate though I have been convinced by my peers that many small to medium businesses (SMBs) do not have the expertise to customize their software and pointed out that patches and upgrades to software that has been modified will be difficult, hence these non-techy customers would prefer to just use something out of the box.
Easy Assets .NET : Standard Edition will be your basic, deployable install. Source is not included, but you are welcome to reference the business layer .dll in your own projects and build extensions to it. For patches and updates you'll be able to download a deployable build from the website and just copy over the current virtual directory files. ($799)
Easy Assets .NET : Enterprise Edition will include all the source code for the application. Enterprise customers can cobrand the application and change anything they like. The only thing Enterprise customers are not allowed to do is host or sell access to the application (well, they can, but it would require a separate agreement from my company). Enterprise customers will have access to an online change log where I will post code files that have been modified or added for patches. This way for updates on custom versions they can view the file that changed and decide whether they want to deploy it or not. Enterprise edition also comes with 10 hours of custom development. Additional hours of custom development are available at a reasonable rate. ($1699)
Easy Assets .NET : Hosted Edition is for you customers who do not have the expertise, equipment, or patience to manage your own servers. My company does all the management, patches, and backups and as long as you remain a subscriber you will be on the latest version free of charge. This version is also available to be customized, though all custom work on our servers must be done by us. ($15 / user / month)
All versions come with the following:
- Lifetime free email tech support
- 1 year of upgrades
- 30 day money back guarentee
Wrapping things up: Installation
A clean and easy install process is critical to the success of your product. If you think about it, the install process is the first impression your product gives your customer after purchase. If it goes poorly it can cause some pretty severe damage to the customer satisfaction. They just shelled out a bunch of money for a product, and it doesn't even work!
In addition, my software depends on sql server 2000 / msde being present. I know that many SMBs without a good IT staff are probably unable to handle installing and managing MSDE so it is vital that I make a good install script that can automate that for them. So here's what I'm working on:
Step 1: Welcome/splash screen and acceptance of license agreement prompt (/webroot/Help/LicenseAgreement.htm in the zip file)
Step 2: Type of install
There are 3 installation options
A: Install Database and Extract Web Application
B: Install Database Only
C: Extract Web Application Only
Step 3: Database setup (If they choose 2A or 2B)
There are 2 options for database setup:
A: I would like to install on an existing SQL Server 2000 or MSDE database
B: I would like to install MSDE on this machine and deploy the database to it
Step 3A: Existing database
A: Prompt for database username/password for database creation
B: Prompt for username and password for application to use
C: Create a database called EasyAssets
D: Execute the DatabaseCreate.sql file on the database
E: Create the user specified in step B
F: Grant the user execute priviliges to all the stored procedures and select rights to all the tables.
G: If option 2A was chosen, store the database credentials for extracting the web application.
Step 3B: MSDE
A: Install and configure MSDE
B: Go to 3A, part B
Step 4: Extract Web Application (2A or 2C)
A: Verify Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installed
B: Pick a folder to extract the web files to
C: Extract files
D: Overwrite the /webroot/dataconfiguration.config file (xml) with the proper database settings. (This can be manually tweaked later if the customer moves servers.
E: Run the installservices.bat script for enterprise library.