User-fee programs
Kushan Mitra thinks consumers could soon be renting software instead of buying it.
A few days ago your columnist spent a good part of his working day uninstalling various programs from his office computer. Many of the programs had not been used in over a year. Rummage through your home or office computer and you will also likely find tens of pieces of software that you hardly ever use, and some possibly you use only once. Such software critically blights your computer's performance and keeps the hardware industry happy because you have to constantly upgrade your machine.
While much of this "bloatware" is easy to remove, other pieces of software might not be. Take Microsoft Office, for example. Even if you use Word regularly, you might never open PowerPoint, or Excel. That might be fine at office, because your company would have bought a bulk licence from Microsoft, but at home it makes little sense because even with reduced prices, software such as Microsoft Office can be quite expensive. What most people in India end up doing, therefore, is buying pirated copies - which can end up damaging their computer.
But what if you could just "rent" software to use when you want it. No piracy, because the software you are renting is legal. The idea seems nice and is quite viable thanks to broadband Internet connections and the fact that computing can be shared at both the server end and the user's computer. We recently met Sachin Duggal, Founder and Managing Director of a start-up called Nivio, which is trying to seed the concept. While "renting" software is a lot cheaper than buying it, he reckons that software companies pummelled by the high incidence of piracy would still take to the idea and consumers would see the user benefit in getting legal, kosher pieces of software at affordable prices.
How does this work? The software downloads via a high-speed Internet connection and installs on your computer - not all of it though. Part of the software will still remain on servers and processing will be shared by both the user's computer and the service provider's servers, allowing even older computers to run more advanced programs. Duggal foresees a monthly-use billing system. So if you use the software even once a month, you get billed for it, though he did concede that "pay per use" billing could be looked at later on.
Of course, renting software might not make sense to everyone. An advertising professional will still need to buy Adobe Premiere, though an amateur film maker who wants to make a professional quality movie could possibly rent the software instead of depending on a pirated DVD he picked up at a seedy alley in Delhi's Nehru Place.
The user scenarios are endless. But even if it is not for everyone, software-on-rent could bring the costs of software down for a great majority. And by reducing piracy, software companies will find a new stream of revenues from users who previously did not buy legal software. And, it could also make your computer perform better by reducing the amount of software on it.
Will this make a difference to your life? According to Nivio, they are on the verge of launching this 'software for rent' model alongside Indian Internet service providers such as Airtel, though pricing details are yet to be sorted out. Owning software is not like owning a house, it is not an "asset". We believe software rental is the future.
While much of this "bloatware" is easy to remove, other pieces of software might not be. Take Microsoft Office, for example. Even if you use Word regularly, you might never open PowerPoint, or Excel. That might be fine at office, because your company would have bought a bulk licence from Microsoft, but at home it makes little sense because even with reduced prices, software such as Microsoft Office can be quite expensive. What most people in India end up doing, therefore, is buying pirated copies - which can end up damaging their computer.
But what if you could just "rent" software to use when you want it. No piracy, because the software you are renting is legal. The idea seems nice and is quite viable thanks to broadband Internet connections and the fact that computing can be shared at both the server end and the user's computer. We recently met Sachin Duggal, Founder and Managing Director of a start-up called Nivio, which is trying to seed the concept. While "renting" software is a lot cheaper than buying it, he reckons that software companies pummelled by the high incidence of piracy would still take to the idea and consumers would see the user benefit in getting legal, kosher pieces of software at affordable prices.
How it works The software will reside on servers on the Internet Since most wired Internet connections can function at 16 megabits per second, the data will be easily transferred... ...to the user's computer, who will pay per month, or eventually per use, for the software |
How does this work? The software downloads via a high-speed Internet connection and installs on your computer - not all of it though. Part of the software will still remain on servers and processing will be shared by both the user's computer and the service provider's servers, allowing even older computers to run more advanced programs. Duggal foresees a monthly-use billing system. So if you use the software even once a month, you get billed for it, though he did concede that "pay per use" billing could be looked at later on.
Of course, renting software might not make sense to everyone. An advertising professional will still need to buy Adobe Premiere, though an amateur film maker who wants to make a professional quality movie could possibly rent the software instead of depending on a pirated DVD he picked up at a seedy alley in Delhi's Nehru Place.
The user scenarios are endless. But even if it is not for everyone, software-on-rent could bring the costs of software down for a great majority. And by reducing piracy, software companies will find a new stream of revenues from users who previously did not buy legal software. And, it could also make your computer perform better by reducing the amount of software on it.
Will this make a difference to your life? According to Nivio, they are on the verge of launching this 'software for rent' model alongside Indian Internet service providers such as Airtel, though pricing details are yet to be sorted out. Owning software is not like owning a house, it is not an "asset". We believe software rental is the future.
