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Timothy Chou, former President of Oracle On Demand and Stanford lecturer for over two decades, authored the book Introduction to Cloud Computing, Business & Technology primarily for his students. Yet this book which is free for download has a wealth of useful insights into how early-stage SaaS companies navigated through the difficult decisions they faced in growing their businesses. If you are interested in how today’s SaaS and Cloud Computing landscape matured to the point it is today, read this book. You can download it free with no opt-in thanks to the generosity of Mr. Chou.
A Great Read on Software Business Models
I have been reading this book over the weekend and it has so many excellent company examples I felt compelled to blog about it. Mr. Chou writes about the early days of Salesforce.com and other well-known and successful companies when the business models they are predicated on were uncertain and fraught with risk. His examples walk the reader through how these companies navigated through decisions of seven business models of software he introduces at the beginning of the book. These seven business models are illustrated below.
Bottom line: Most refreshing about this book is that Mr. Chou is striving to explain each of the seven business models with an unbiased analysis supported with company examples. He is on Twitter (@timothychou) and back in January asked for feedback on this book. If you have a passion for this area you might want to follow him on Twitter and see about helping out with the next edition.