A blurring between on premise and hosted CRM software…

Once upon a time it was pretty simple. If you wanted hosted CRM software you paid per person per month. If you wanted your CRM software in-house you purchased a perpetual license up front.

In ‘The Knives Your Sales People Should Have’ Brad Feld points out it doesn’t have to be this way, and probably won’t be moving forward – ‘In 2009 (and going forward) customers will buy software using both perpetual licensing and subscription licensing, regardless of how the software is deployed’

In other words, whether I want my software in-house, or hosted, I should be able to choose to pay up front, or per person per month. I think he’s spot on, and we’ll see a much more flexible approach to pricing models for CRM software in the coming months as the recession forces software vendors to listen rather more carefully to how their customers want to pay for and deploy their software.

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