Hi Iím Matt Coolidge with Aria Systems here
at Dreamforce 2012, sitting here with Sal
Visca, CTO of Elastic Path.
Sal, welcome.
Hi.
Thank you.
So first of all, tell us a little bit about
Elastic Path.
What do you guys do?
So Elastic Path provides a platform for helping
our customers sell their goods.
Weíve been focused very much on digital goods
so moving into the world of the subscription
economy, the digital economy, helping to sell
video content, book content, software, games,
that kind of thing.
So what do you think of the conference so
far this year?
Itís a buzz.
Iím been coming to Dreamforce over the last
several years and Iíve met Mark Benioff over
the years and heís had this vision thatís
just playing out beautifully.
You just look at the ecosystem around it.
It really is tremendous.
And they way they started out with Salesforce
automation and theyíve expanded so much,
is amazing.
Any major trends that have jumped out at you
this year, that you didnít see or maybe were
smaller in years past?
Well I hear something about social.
I keep hearing something about social and
mobile.
It must be the next big thing out here, right?
I think itís a fad but uhÖ Yeah, clearly
social applications are a big deal.
And the fact that people collaborate differently
to get their job doneÖ I used to be at a
business intelligence company and weíve been
talking a lot about the fact that people are
trying to make better decisions based on data
but a lot of times they really are collaborating
with people they know and trust to make their
decisions.
So, youíre starting to see that get baked
into the software and I think thatís a great
trend.
I think another trend thatís been interesting
over the past couple of years you can really
trace here is the evolution of cloud computing
from industry buzzword to tangible market
force.
And just seeing the transition in terms of
how CIOs have to pitch new software that they
want to buy, and talking to the higher upsÖ
Once upon a time it was ëwhy cloudí and
now itís ëwhy not cloudí.
Yes.
Yes.
I think one interesting question along those
lines is, how has the rise of the cloud impacted
the billing industry, and more specifically,
subscription billing?
Yeah, so, I think billing is one type of solution
that most would recognize itís not something
they want to build because itís very advanced.
Itís not something you want to build on-premise
and deploy and manage yourself.
So itís probably easier for billing to be
in the cloud, in a lot of ways and thereís
probably less evangelizing you need to do
about that.
If youíre looking at core ERP, then you can
kind of argue, ëwell we need to have control
of thatí.
But for billing we see this subscription economy
that we all talk about being very relevant.
And for us selling content and helping our
customers sell their content, people are nowÖitís
not a one-time purchase.
It really is the fact that I connect into
some content and that content lives on.
If I buy a movie, whether itís through Netflix
or Rovi or someone else, Iím maintaining
a relationship with that provider.
And Iím going to subscribe, whether itís
monthly and pay a certain amount per month,
or Iím going to one movie, and every couple
of weeks I might buy another movie.
It maintains that ongoing connection and relationship.
So I think subscription is, in terms of the
old type of subscription where I pay yearly
or monthly, I think thatís one way to do
it.
But I think thereís going to be a lot of
different ways to consume content.
And youíre going to need very flexible billing
and subscription services that can really
deal with those different business models.
When youíre out there in the field today
talking to customers, prospects, anybody really,
what are some of the major challenges you
see when theyíre talking about implementing
a billing model.
Are there any universals that pop up time
and again?
Yeah, so, Iíve been doing quite a few presentations
and conferences, and most of the customers
are struggling with their business models.
You know, should they give some content away
for free and then put a pay wall up?
How do you hook customers to try your content,
whether itís a freemium model or not.
So the main theme I see is customers want
to be able to experiment with different business
models.
They want to try putting content up in different
ways.
They want consumer to have choice about how
theyíre going to pay, how theyíre going
to consume, whether itís metered based on
dataÖyou know, how much I use.
Or if itís based on periods of time or that
kind of thing.
So the main challenge seems to be that flexibility
and the fact that the business models are
going to change and every customers Iím working
with right now are trying to figure it out.
And so they want to be able to experiment.
And thatís why having strong, flexible solutions
that can allow you to try different things
is really key.
So with that in mind, why do you guys work
with Aria Systems?
What are some of the major benefits you see
with working with Aria vs other folks in the
subscription billing field?
What do they bring to the table that you find
really adds to your product?
Yeah, we really looked around at the different
vendors providing subscription and billing.
And I used to do a lot of work in the telco
space and with OSS, BSS systems, and the network
operators really had to figure out, when you
have a data plan, how much youíre paying
based on your usage and that type of thing.
So having that type of background, I recognize
the complexities that come with how you deal
with billing specifically and different subscription
offers.
So when I went in the market to kind of look
around, Aria stood out quite clearly to us.
We looked at some of the other vendors as
well.
But the flexibility that is provided in the
Aria engine, dealing with the complexity,
the telco grade kind of complexity, was very
important to us.
But probably most important was the fact that
we had tremendous flexibility in how we integrate
with Aria, and how we in terms of how we present
our catalogue to customers.
Whether they have frequency based products
or one time purchase products, being able
to kind of integrate into the Aria functionality
in different ways was very, very important.
So, and then aside from that, the technology
is great, the cloud infrastructure is rock
solid.
The company has been absolutely fantastic
to work with.
And I work with partners all over the place
and the kind of relationships we have with
the CEO, with the exec team, with the support
teams has been fantastic.
So we canít say enough good things about
Aria.
Sal, thank you so much for stopping by.
Really hope you enjoy the rest of the show.
Thank you very much.
