Greg Reinacker’s Weblog

Musings on just about everything.

Archive for July, 2005

NewsGator Enterprise Server performance testing

July 28th, 2005 by gregr

A couple of weeks ago, we sent a couple of engineers up to the Microsoft Technology Center in Mountain View, to work with some Microsoft guys to do load/performance testing of the upcoming (real soon now) NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES).
 
So first, a big thanks to Zach and Luis at Microsoft who helped with this all week – they were great.  They had ready-made Exchange environments already set up, and ready to go.  Anywhere from 50 users (the smallest test we did) up to 5000 users.  And load simulators running that would simulate actual user activity for these users, to ensure we were running realistic simulations.
 
We tested the baby-NGES configuration (er, I mean “entry level” – sorry marketing guys!), which runs with the free MSDE SQL engine.  We had projections as to the user counts we could support on this configuration before the connection limit would cripple us…and we were able to adjust those counts.  Turns out we can support more “typical” users than projected.
 
But the real fun started with the large-user-count Exchange scenarios.  One recommended Exchange configuration now is to run large servers with thousands of users on each one.  So in one test configuration, we tested one large 8-way server, with several thousand users.  The following chart shows the CPU load on the Exchange server:
 
 
The orange line shows the time when NGES was switched on in Exchange sync mode.  Variability in the data is mostly due to the (intentional) randomness of the load simulator.  Basically, what this and other data tells us is that there is little effect to the Exchange server of running NGES against it – which soothes a major concern of many IT folks we’ve been talking to.
 
The particular test above was with a single NGES box, with SQL Server on the same machine as NGES.  We have even more data on how many users we support in this configuration, and how many we can support when SQL is moved off-machine.
 
User mix was an interesting question.  We ended up on a mix of:
 
90% of users had 10 feeds
9% had 100 feeds
1% had 1000 feeds
 
And varying percentages of “shared” feeds, where it’s a group subscription rather than an individual subscription, or where multiple people happen to subscribe to the same feed.
 
(aside – we have lots more data than what’s shown above, for hours at a time, and much more than just CPU data…this was just the “prettiest” chart I had handy!)
 
So anyway…like I said, it’s getting close.  The amount of pre-release interest in this product has been amazing to all of us…I can’t wait until the final version ships!

Category: newsgator | 2 Comments »

Denver Post News Hound launched

July 20th, 2005 by gregr

It was announced back in March…and today, the Denver Post News Hound application was launched.  It’s a custom Denver Post application, where their customers can view news and other content from the Denver Post and other publishers (including any RSS feeds).  Here’s a shot of the main window (click for larger):

If you happen to live in Denver, be sure to check out the full-page ad in the paper that will be running for a while.

This is the first public application built on the NewsGator Media Platform…stay tuned for more! :-)

Category: newsgator | No Comments »

Subscription stuff

July 18th, 2005 by gregr

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about NewsGator’s subscription plans, and the way our desktop products (NewsGator Outlook edition and FeedDemon) would work with them. Nick Bradbury posted about it a day later. What we were really surprised about is the sheer volume of feedback about this, most of it not-completely-positive. :-)

For those that didn’t notice, Nick posted two days later announcing that we had re-thought this decision. Basically, when you buy NewsGator Outlook edition or FeedDemon, we’re making some changes so those products will continue to work forever, rather than stopping when your subscription runs out.  Certain features (that rely on parts of NewsGator Online) will likely be disabled when your subscription runs out, but the software itself will continue to function.

The plan is to still use the same activation system for this that we have in place already.  So you’ll still need a NewsGator Online account to activate the products…however, even if your account expires you’ll still be able to activate the versions of the products that you had access to originally.  We’re still working out the details, but we’ll definitely let you know as soon as we have something concrete to talk about.

There’s been someone posting a lot of spam comments on blogs and forums about this; for an example, scroll down in the comments on Chris Pirillo’s post here.  You can find this identical comment lots of other places as well, if you look hard enough.  In the middle of that comment is this:

Hi my friend,I want to tell you something about nick’s promising is a lie:
feeddemon won’t work after your subscribtion runs out.

Come on now…no one is lying.  The existing builds of Outlook edition 2.5 and FeedDemon 1.6 will indeed not activate if your subscription runs out…however, we are making changes to both products and the online activation system soon, which will rectify this.  And in the meantime, everyone who is affected by this has plenty of time in their existing subscription, so no one needs to “wait” for us to finish it.

So anyway, I just wanted to publicly clarify what we’re doing, and try to help stamp out some of the FUD that this individual has been trying to spread.

Category: newsgator | 6 Comments »

Why subscription software?

July 5th, 2005 by gregr

As many have noticed, and blogged about, NewsGator’s individual products (meaning everything except NewsGator Enterprise Server) are now all sold on a subscription basis. This includes Outlook edition 2.5, and the upcoming FeedDemon 1.6. Actually Outlook edition 2.0 was sold on a subscription basis starting earlier this year, but we didn’t make a big point about talking about it.
 
Lots of existing customers have asked why we did this…so let me talk a bit about it. Contrary to popular belief, we didn’t have a secret meeting where we tried to figure out how to squeeze every last dollar or euro out of our customers. :-)
 
So why, then?
 
Well, here’s the thing. Back in January of 2004, NewsGator Outlook edition 2.0 was launched, along with NewsGator Online (formerly NewsGator Online Services). Outlook edition had a license fee (it was $29), and if you wanted to use sync or any of our online features, the online subscription started at $5.95/mo.
 
Later, in October of 2004, we made parts of NewsGator Online (most notably the web edition and media center edition) available for free. Other services (smart feeds, premium content, mobile edition, etc) were still available on a subscription basis.
 
So far, so good, we thought. We were selling stuff the way people were used to paying for it – that is, some stuff for free, a license fee for software, and a recurring cost for services. Right?
 
Wrong, as it turns out. Problem is, customers were confused. As we started to build more cool services in NewsGator Online, and as we started making more direct enterprise sales, we realized that everyone was confused. As customers learned what was available with the online system, they wanted it…but the whole license + subscription thing was too complicated.
 
And when we add new products like FeedDemon in the mix, it gets even more complicated, since FeedDemon will also rely on NewsGator Online features.
 
So what to do. We could just have a license fee, and eat the service cost. That’s what Intuit does with Quicken, as I recall…but they shut off the services after some period of time for each software release, and they piss off a bunch of customers every time they do it. Also, this doesn’t solve the problem for a user who doesn’t want the Outlook client – we’d be back to a subscription for them.
 
So we went the other way. Get rid of the license fees, and go with _only_ subscription pricing. Include all of the products in the subscription bundles – including Outlook edition, and FeedDemon (real soon now). And at the same time, we dropped the pricing. Outlook edition comes as part of the cheapest business subscription plan, which starts at $1.95/mo or $19.95/year. This is $10 cheaper than the old license fee.
 
And, we’re constantly adding value to the subscription bundles. For example – subscribers will get FeedDemon 1.6 as part of their subscription.  No extra license fee, no nothing. So for as low as $1.95/mo or $19.95/yr, you get both Outlook edition and FeedDemon.
 
“But wait,” you say. “I don’t care about the online system – I just want the products.” Ok – let’s do a quick analysis over 2 years to get both products:
 
Old pricing: $29 (Outlook) + $29.95 (FeedDemon) = $58.95 (plus upgrade fees)
New pricing: $19.95/yr x 2 years = $39.90
 
Cheaper after 2 years, and at the end of 3 years, you’d be roughly money-equivalent.
 
But maybe you didn’t want both products, but really only one of them. The free upgrades are really the advantage then. Another example:
 
Old pricing:
 
- initial fee $29
- major upgrade in 1 year $20
 
total – $49 for two years
 
New pricing: $19.95/yr x 2 years = $39.90
 
With the subscription plans, you get free upgrades, new products, and access to the ever-growing services available on the online site. And we’re committed to adding cool new stuff all the time to these plans – witness what we’re doing with FeedDemon. And hey – tell us what YOU want in these subscription plans…we love suggestions.
 
But what happens when your subscription expires? Well, the products will no longer activate. But you’re not going to be locked out of your data or anything…you just won’t be able to retrieve new content until you re-activate. You’ll have full access to your data even after your subscription expires.
 
So anyway, that was a bit long-winded. But we really feel like this was the way to go, given the challenges we were facing selling into consumer, business, and enterprise markets all at once.
 
And I know we’ve probably already lost some existing customers over this. But we’ve tried hard to make this work for you – so riddle me this. For those who purchased Outlook edition 2.0 prior to the subscription change, we’ve offered you 2 years of free service. Try it out – use it for those 2 years. And then come back at the end of that, when your subscription is up for renewal, and tell me honestly if you feel like you’ve gotten your $29 worth – and tell me if you feel like it’s worth $19.95 for one more year.
 
We’ll listen – I promise.

Category: newsgator | 19 Comments »