Software business

This article is about selling software, for information about software made for business: Business software.

Software Business is the commercial activity of the software industry, aimed at producing, buying and selling software products or software services. The business of software differs from other businesses, in that its main good is intangible and fixed costs of production are high while variable costs of production are close to zero.

Cusumano and Nambisan divide software companies (supplier-side) into service and product companies according to how they conduct business. Popp and Meyer give a more detailed analysis of different types of business models of software companies.

In the Software product business, Software is licensed for installation and execution on a user- or customer-supplied infrastructure. In the software product business, revenues typically originate from selling software upgrades to the customer.

Software services business is a strategy of a software company whose offering consists mainly of services or consulting relating to software development.

Generally business model of a software company can be categorized as product company, services company or a hybrid between these two models. Software service business can also refer to offering Software as a Service.

Software services business can be categorized into following categories:

Characteristics of Service Operations that are relevant to software services industry:

...
Wikipedia