Let’s start with ShopEx.
At midnight on April 10th, ShopEx, a well-known domestic online store system development company, announced that its ShopEx single store version will be permanently free: free download, free upgrade, free use, without any restrictions on usage time and functions. The ShopEx online store system is a software built on PHP+MySQL to quickly build a personalized online store. It has dozens of built-in online payment gateways and dozens of sets of beautifully designed templates, and supports the sale of physical and non-physical goods.
ShopEx’s market share occupies a very high share in the domestic similar software field. It has a good reputation in the industry and its sales volume has doubled month by month recently. The online store system is one of the main sources of the company's income, and announcing it is free is equivalent to cutting off the source of income in the eyes of the outside world. Why was it suddenly announced free?
Let’s first take a look at the application of PHP at the enterprise level.
Several typical PHP enterprise-level applications
In the current WEB service development language camp, ASP, PHP, JSP and ASP.Net are the most common. ASP’s poor security is obvious to all and cannot be cross-platform; ASP.Net and JSP are difficult and costly to implement, and are mostly used in large projects, and ASP.Net cannot be cross-platform; PHP has good security, strong scalability, and supports Various databases, including version 5.0 launched last year, have greatly shortened the project development cycle. The key is the combination of Linux+Apache+PHP+MySQL, which is very low-cost and suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises.
In China, ChinaRen community used PHP as a development language in a commercial project for the first time. In just a few years, domestic PHP applications have spread rapidly, and the number of various WEB application software based on PHP language is increasing.
PHP is the most commonly used software developed in CMS (content management system) and BBS (forum). CMS systems for enterprise-level applications such as CMSWare (www.cmsware.com), BBS such as Discuz! and PHPWind, CRM (customer resource management) such as C3CRM (www.c3crm.com) .
CMSware content management system is known as the most free website application construction platform, which can generate static pages. Its website pass system allows website architects to freely expand the membership application model of the website and fully integrate various applications on the website. .
When it comes to Discuz! and PHPWind, they are famous and known to all webmasters. Discuz! On New Year's Day 2006, it was announced that the Discuz! forum was free. After a period of silence, PHPWind followed up and announced that the forum was free.
C3CRM is a CRM software developed based on SugarCRM and suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises in China. It is open source and free. Its functions and comprehensive performance are so high that they even surpass some high-priced CRM systems. Recently, C3CRM was also selected as SugarForge's Best Project of May 2006.
Integration and win-win
CMS software development companies tend to provide users with an overall solution, providing users with one-stop website application related products and supporting services, and this service must be based on User needs have been constantly updated and changing for a long time. The needs of users are ever-changing. In addition to content management, forum community building, mall systems, and subsequent customer resource management cannot be developed by a software development company in a short period of time. This has not yet transformed the same type of Software competition issues are taken into account.
In this case, in addition to increasing development efforts and overall improving the performance of their products, integration and win-win cooperation with partners have become a natural choice for small and medium-sized software development companies. In line with this, the above-mentioned software developers have successively changed their market strategies and service strategies since last year. On the one hand, they are determined to develop their own fields, market positioning and goals, and on the other hand, they have carried out horizontal alliances to Collaborate on technology and marketing. Entering 2006, this cooperation activity became more obvious.
ShopEx is unique in the field of online store systems and is also the most active in integration and cooperation. In addition to bundling dozens of payment gateways, last year it was integrated with the Discuz! forum, making the two seamlessly linked. At the beginning of 2006, cooperation with relevant vendors such as CMS and CRM was also on the agenda.
It is reported that CMSWare will focus on improving the ease of use based on existing products and launch a new product, which is aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises or small and medium-sized enterprises with little technical ability and low requirements for flexible customization. Individual users. In addition, later this year, a dynamic website application development platform product will be released. The name has not yet been decided. This product and service is basically provided to professional industry website users or comprehensive information that require website interactivity. Community website users. CMSWare will also release an enterprise-level BLOG for community or professional sites in the near future.
The product manager of CMSWare told reporters that CMSWare’s pass technology will fully support mature products such as VBB, DZ, and ShopEx.
At the press briefing two days before ShopEx announced it would be free, the reporter also saw the person in charge of the C3CRM project.
Service is the real value of software
Back to the starting topic, although some analysts believe that ShopEx is free to increase its market share, but a company, especially a software company, if If you don't have "family background", you can't make jokes.
ShopEx CEO Pei Dapeng told reporters that ShopEx will take the route of technical services and value-added services in the future, and charge annual service fees to users who are willing to purchase technical services. This decision was made after careful consideration.
Among similar software in China, ShopEx has almost no real competitors. Although the product cannot meet the needs of 100% of users, ShopEx’s functions and user interface have become the objects of imitation and the de facto benchmark for similar software.
Because ShopEx users conduct commercial transactions on this platform, most users are in favor of free software and opposed to open source: users of commercial software pay more attention to security, and compiled code runs more efficiently.
What can really reassure business users is not the software itself, but the company that develops the software. Software that does not have a team to provide technical services in a long-term and stable manner will soon withdraw from the market and be replaced by similar software.
Software has moved from the generation of selling licenses to the generation of selling services. Therefore, service is the real value of software.
In fact, when users buy software, what they really buy is the service behind the software. Free software does not mean free services. Domestic users' software consumption psychology is not yet mature. Overseas, this model has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
If it is said that because of competition, forums such as Discuz! are free of charge, which is an isolated phenomenon in domestic WEB software, but the announcement of ShopEx being free shows that the domestic industry has begun a change, and the WEB application software market has gradually matured. logo is bound to detonate the entire software development industry.
Start by building projects to accumulate funds, then build products, and use projects to grow products. After the products mature, the market returns will be higher than working on projects alone. The development of domestic PHP software development companies basically follows this route. As the product matures and the user base is cultivated, the larger the base of the user base, the greater the room for imagination.
In 2006, enterprise-level PHP application software was full of excitement and drama, and users were looking forward to more magical works.
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