By Emilio Maldonado
A lot of articles have been written recently about freemium models and the psychology of zero prices. In the ori
ginal paper that triggered the studies, behavioral economists from MIT found that the price of zero has a special effect on people's minds. People tend to overreact to free products, their intrinsic valuation increases beyond the cost-benefit differences relative to preferable priced products. Free products may elicit a higher expectation of quality and evoke a higher positive effect in the customer's decision-making process.
Free is irresistible, and is a great way to boost demand. In addition, the internet has made it possible to deliver software for a marginal cost that is close to free. While I am not implying that you give away your products, a freemium choice certainly creates an interesting mechanism for reaching out to users and engaging with them to solve real problems.
At Aerohive, we start from the premise that you first understand a user-problem, and then figure out the product that solves it. That is how recently we became the first vendor to offer a Bonjour Gateway integrated in our product portfolio of Access Points (APs).
Looking at the users trying to solve the BYOD problem on top of their WLAN installations, we decided to offer them a free Bonjour Gateway program. We packaged the Bonjour Gateway functionality in a virtual machine form factor, and also developed a special free HiveManager account simplified for managing the gateway from our cloud-based platform.
The end-result is that users can freely register online, deploy and interconnect their Bonjour services across their existing wired and wireless networks, agnostic to the network vendor. Pretty useful!
With the increasing BYOD trend, people are looking for AirPrint, AirPlay services in the network. IT administrators need to control who has access to what, across subnets and VLANs. The Bonjour Gateway is right there to help them.
To learn more about the Aerohive Free Bonjour Gateway program visit us here.
==========
Emilio Maldonado is the Product Line Manager for Cloud and Applications at Aerohive Networks. He has over 15 years of experience in Networking and Software. Prior to Aerohive, he led the Mobility Services group at Cisco Systems responsible for growing the portfolio of Location Services, WIPS and Network Management. Previously he developed software at Airespace. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from ITESM Monterrey and an MBA from The Wharton School.
==========
