Today we had a call with Chris Collins, GM Enterprise, and Amanda Van Nuys, Executive Director, Enterprise Marketing, to clarify the pricing model for SL Enterprise. The pricing model for SL Enterprise is a one-time $55,000 up-front fee for the appliance and software license for 100 avatars; plus an annual recurring fee based on the number of users licensed (starting at $175/user with discounts based on volume); plus any third-party applications or content and third-party custom development costs.

While we were at it, we took the opportunity to clarify that by “a Web-based solution” we mean “a solution that runs in a Web browser.”

Apologies for the confusion.

If we look at a business case perspective over and above exisiting second life it will be a difficult ROI. you will probably need at least 1/2 a full time person to run and administer the environment, (say 50K), the application itself 55K for 100 users so this comes out to 105K per year. I heard another 5K for support per year from the Lindens during the Q and A (not sure what that was for as we were told it did not occur in the first year only year 2. So year 1 is approx $1050 per concurrent user and year 2 is $1100 per user. If you compare this with some of the other engines like Forterra, Protonmedia, Teleplace, web.alive it is not that unreasonable. If you compare it to opensource tools like opensim, wonderland, croquet than it appears to be overpriced,

Will companies buy/rent SLE? Sure they will. People buy microsoft office when open office is free and does exactly the same thing.

You are correct; it will not be possible for those on separate SL Enterprise instances to travel back and forth between them. Even if those instances are deployed by the same company, behind the same firewally. I understand this capability is on their roadmap.

About pricing: Yesterday during Linden Lab’s enterprise open office hours I asked whether the $55k price is a one-time upfront fee, or $55k/year. Amanda Van Nuys, the company’s Exec. Dir. of Enterprise Marketing, said that the cost was $55k/year. She gave a few details, such as this price includes both servers (SL and voice) and up to 100 avatars. This is a very unusual pricing model for an enterprise appliance. A more common pricing model for enterprise software, or an appliance, is a one-time license fee plus an annual maintenance fee, and customers can also often choose varying levels of annual support, for an additional fee.

Today I got into a discussion about SL Enterprise pricing at a ThinkBalm Innovation Community event and several people said they think I got it wrong — that the $55k is a one-time upfront fee and there will be an annual fee beyond that that ranges from the $5k to 20% range (opinions varied). That would be a much more reasonable model. I have emails in to Linden Lab for clarification. I will correct my original post, in great embarassment, if it turns out I heard wrong.