Seagate Software Inc says it’s pleased with the success of its free software initiative, launched back in June (CI No 3,678). Seagate has been offering its Seagate Analysis desktop tool and Info7 server product for less than 50 users for free over the last five months, and sent out some 2.5m CDs in an AOL-style marketing campaign. It hoped to capture a larger proportion of the 95% of businesses that currently do not use business intelligence tools, and expected to make its money from every seat after 50 that companies use.
Seagate now reports it has had over 150,000 requests and registrations for the software, and seen market awareness increase greatly – a 30% increase in company recognition after the launch according to an independent research firm. Seagate says its Analysis tool has been adopted by large companies such as Sun Life, IBM, Lucent, Levi Strauss, US West and 3M. Those customers, it says, realize the main value of a business intelligence system is in the infrastructure and back end, and that front-end tools are commodities that should remain free.
