英文翻译

The Changing Software Business:

Moving from Products to Services Michael A.Cusumano

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

软件业的变化趋势：从制作转向服务

迈克尔·库苏马诺

麻省理工学院

A dramatic shift is under way in the enterprise-software industry as established vendors embrace services in the wake of declining product revenues. It remains to be seen whether life-cycle dynamics or business-model choices are behind the long-term trend.

一个引人注目的转变正在企业软件产业中进行，企业软件产业作为固定供应商，它的服务随着产品价格的下降而下降。这种长期趋势的背后，是生命周期的动态变化还是商业模式的选择，仍有侍观察。

The dramatic changes in the software business over the past few years have important implications for both users and producers of software products and services. Traditional product sales and license fees have declined, and product company revenues have shifted to services such as annual maintenance payments that entitle users to patches, minor upgrades, and often technical support.

这种软件产业的变化趋势，在过去几年对使用软件的用户和为用户提供软件产品和软件售后服务的生产者都具有重要的影响。传统产品的销售费用和牌照费用有所下降，产品生产厂家的收入都移到服务方面上，如每年的赡养费，为用户提供产品补丁，次要升级以及平时的一些技术支持。

This shift has been especially pronounced among enterprise-software vendors. We can clearly see this in the case of Siebel, whose product sales fell dramatically before Oracle acquired the company in 2005. A decade ago, even Oracle experienced the crisscross—service and maintenance revenues crossing over to exceed product revenues. We couldn‟t tell if Oracle and Siebel‟s product sales were dropping or product prices were falling, as Figure 1 depicts, but the effect was the same: Services (including maintenance, which typically accounts for up to 60 percent of service revenues) became more important than product revenues.

这种转变在企业软件供应商之间已经显得格外突出。我们可以清楚地看到Siebel公司的处境，Siebel公司的销售额急剧下降，在2005年甲骨文收购其之后才有所好转。在十年前，实际上甲骨文就经历了服务和维护收入与产品收入交替超越的情况。我们不能片面的认为这种情况是由甲骨文和Siebel公司的产品销售额下降或是产品出售价格下降造成的，正如图1所示，就算产品销售额和产品出售价格不下降，造成的效果也是一样：即服务收入（包括维修，约占服务收入的60%）将比产品收入更加重要。

`There are some exceptions. Products sales continue to account for most of game-software revenues, although onlinr-gaming service revenues are growing fast. Platform companies like Microsoft—which has a large ecosystem of PC manufactures as well as enterprise and individual users driving sales of Windows and Office—continue to generate enormous revenues from products. But even Microsoft is encountering change. The company reported that services in the

server and tools segment accounted for about 3 percent of its fiscal year 2007 revenues and online services (MSN) for 5 percent of its revenues. Just a few years ago, Microsoft derived all its revenues from product sales.

也有一些例外。虽然目前online游戏服务收入正快速增长，但产品销售收入仍占游戏软件公司总收入的大多数。如微软这样拥有一个大型的个人电脑制造系统的公司也向企业和特别用户推荐Windows视窗操作系统和Office系列办公软件，微软继续从产品中获得巨大的收入。但即使是遇到了变化，微软在其2007年财务报表中服务器和工具部门的收入占到了5%、在线服务(MSN)的收入占到了3%。可是就在短短几年前，微软所有的收入都来自产品销售。

A LONG-TERM TREND

一个长期的趋势

Services‟growing importance for software product firms dates back to at least 1990. The advent of free and open source software (which drove down software prices), as well as Y2K and the Internet boom and bust, accelerated the trend. In general, since 2000 or so, we‟ve seen many enterprises and individual customers rebel against paying a lot of money for standardized or commodity-type software products.

服务费用的不断增长对企业的重要性可以追溯到1990年以前。自由软件和开源软件(压低软件价格)，到2000年互联网的繁荣和萧条让这种愈演愈烈。总之，自2000年左右，我们看到许多企业和特殊用户拒绝为标准软件和商用软件支付过多的钱。

New pricing models

新的定价模式

A complicating factor is the rise of new business and pricing models such as software as a service (SaaS) and “free, but not free”software. Companies like Google, Yahoo!, and even Microsoft (with Windows Live and Office Live) now deliver what used to be for-fee software products ranging from search and e-mail to basic desktop applications as a nominally free service. The user doesn‟t directly pay for the software (unless you count the time to watch advertisements), but advertisers pay the software service vendor.

新业务的兴起和定价模式是一个极为复杂的因素，如软件即服务（简称SaaS）和“是免费，但又不是免费的”软件。像谷歌、雅虎，甚至微软（包含Windows Live 和Office Live 服务）目前把以前的一些需要收费的软件产品作为名义上的免费服务软件，这些软件主要是搜索引擎和E-Mail等基本的桌面应用程序软件产品。用户不用再为使用软件支付费用（除非你不想看广告），但是广告商要为这种软件服务支付主定的费用。