[soaman]

Hi!

How can I charge companies for using enterprise-centric applications on Playbook that connect to middle-tiers and back-end systems?

Unfortunately 1000 employess will not use 1000 different paypal accounts to pay per-client license so the companies have to be charged instead.

Any ideas?

Tnx

Soaman

[LuayS]

The only thing I can think of, is make the Application free and the service a premium so users need to create a login to your Application in order to use it, they pay for your service online and you provide them with the credentials to login. You can control how many PINS (Playbook PIN) are tied to each account for example 1 license = 50 users = 50 pins, if they want to change it they need to contact you to remove a PIN and add new one, or you can go further and make it easy for them to do online.

Essentially you would need a website + the application.

Hopefully that makes sense.

I'm no app developer but that is the way I see it working.

[soaman]

I am not talking about services but rather client/server-divided application - both must be installed in organisation. Client on Playbooks and server od business application server.

There are two ways to charge:
1. client is free and is downloaded from app world, server side is paid per client or cores (how to control that?)
2. client costs and is downloaded from app world (30% is going to RIM but at least it is 100% charged at download time and it is 100% paid per new client - no tricks ), server is free but how to pay for each user from one central account?

[KermEd]

Lots of apps like this. You need to charge at the server. Sell license packs. Create different licensds - i.e. x100- x200- x300- so they buy 100 client installs at a time.

Make the server cap clients per the license key.

Make the client error when cap reached.

Give them upgrade paths i.e. turn in license for a bigger license at a cost. Which means you need to be able to disable licenses.

And require an activation nserver connection (you need to host thid or use flexnet) include manual activation so you track your licenses without internet as required. Use an installstion id plus license code to do it.

[gm85]

Having a Free Client + Licensing Managed by the server, is probably the best way to go.

One option would be to have your application use the device's serial number and when it connects to the server, the server stores the serial number in a database.

You would have a licence function on the server that would would keep track of the number of devices in the database. If a client tries to connect (that doesn't have the serial number in the table) and the # of allowed devices in the database is exceeded, the connection is rejected.

You would have a program to manage the device database. Once the table is full, the customer will either have to remove unused devices, or obtain a new licence key (for the server) to increase the number of allowed devices to connect.

Note: You could also have the app generate and store a random number in the client app if you don't want to use the device's serial number.