As a software development professional, choosing a development platform is more than choosing a technology: It is also choosing a business model.
Distributing SIMPOL Runtime Components
The SIMPOL API set and database functionality are presented as software components or objects that can be integrated directly into third party applications. Professional developers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and OEMs wishing to distribute applications built using SIMPOL Professional will need to distribute these components with their application.
The SIMPOL Professional license allows developers to distribute the SIMPOL run-time library with the single-user database. Network versions of the database can be distributed only with the purchased of a network license key. There also various internal components that are not part of the standard run-time package that can be licensed under special terms.
The SIMPOL ISV Resale programme provides ISVs and OEMs with an opportunity to generate revenue by reselling SIMPOL license activation keys with their applications. This can be initiated by the ISV or requested by the user via the Internet.
Consider the following scenario:
A fitness instructor is about to set up a class. She reads in her fitness magazine that you are offering free software to manage “Group Membership”. She downloads your software from our website, or yours, and starts to use it successfully.
She registers it with you, and by agreement with her, she shares that information with us. We will give you the tools to do this online automatically, or we can provide that service for you via our online store.
Every so often she receives a prompt, telling her that she can enhance her product by buying SIMPOL Personal. This will allow her to:
- modify screen layouts
- modify reports, both on-screen and printed
- make simple changes to the underlying database (edit fields etc.)
If she buys this from you, you make a profit and you pay us our share. If she buys this from us, we make a profit and we pay you your share — provided you or she have registered her download and use of your product with us! If your free product is used widely and many of your end-users or customers buy a copy of SIMPOL Personal, you create an excellent revenue stream — your success is also our success!
Later, she wants to enhance her software. She has 2 options:
- ask you to provide the upgrade
- develop the upgrade herself
Either way, you can earn money.
One option is that you earn money from selling your premier or upgraded product, or by developing a custom enhancement for her. The other option is that she buys a copy of SIMPOL Professional and you earn money from that sale.
All SIMPOL tools and products have been designed for various levels of normal end-users to develop their own products.
You can become an enabler for many end-users to enhance and develop sophisticated computer applications, by using your skills to develop many free templates or sample applications.
You can also produce add on modules that enhance the users’ ability to build powerful applications quickly, and earn money through the sale and/or licencing of that product.
We would like to work with you to help you be successful using SIMPOL tools, in ways that might be similar. For more information contact: sales@simpol.com.