Using a Virtual Appliance for Customer Penetration

Posted on July 15, 2007 by Guy Snir
Filed Under Open Source, Enterprise, Virtualization |

Companies, communities and developers who choose to develop Open Source software, enjoy a relatively easy path to penetrating new customers (minus the FUD).
Inquiring new customers, need only to download the software, fiddle with it, and only then make up their mind regarding future implementation, possibly purchasing a support contract (depending on the business model) and so on.

Like starting early, creating virtual appliances of your software can help the efforts of penetrating new customers and markets. For me, and many others, being able to test new software, without having to install it, read the documentation, overcome installation problems, and cluttering my computer is a great advantage.

A similar rule that applies to websites also applies to sofware; In most cases, if I run into a buggy, long, undocumented installation process, I will abandon the software (at least until a new release is out).
Sometimes, well documented, exceptionally easy installation processes will also be abandoned - depending on the skills and attention span of the person installing.

As conversion rates being an important measurement, more and more Open Source companies are investing in ways to change downloads into users into paying customers. If this is important to you, I recommend building Virtual Appliances.

You can create and promote your Virtual Appliances in several places:

And I am sure there are more.

Guy

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