purchase

Solar installer SolarCity is doing, in a limited way, what many people contend is the key to wide-scale adoption of solar power: a leasing program.

The Foster City, Calif.-based start-up is offering customers in California, Arizona, and Oregon a financing option that allows them to get solar panels with a relatively small up-front down payment and monthly lease fee, SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive said on Monday.

Solar panels that generate electricity can cost between $20,000 and $35,000 before tax credits and other clean energy incentives. Those subsidies can bring the cost down significantly, depending on the state … Read more

Efforts to purchase eco-friendly and energy-efficient IT equipment have expanded notably since the spring, according to 130 companies surveyed by Forrester Research.

Some 38 percent of corporations said they take environmental concerns into account when making purchasing decisions, a jump from 25 percent surveyed in April.

The top reason for going green was slashing energy costs, cited by 55 percent of respondents. Doing the right thing for the environment was the next most popular motivation, noted by half of those surveyed. And 95 percent called environmental concerns either somewhat or very important to operations.

However, the study found that most … Read more

With Google's recent crackdown on Web sites the sell PageRank--which really means selling links--a new era has begun for backlink building. In Google's eyes, links coming into a given Web site from external, quality sites increases that site's PageRank, and therefore its standing in the search engine's eyes. Until recently, there were many sites that had quality in Google's eyes (in other words, they had great PageRank) and also sold links. Anyone could get a piece of that good PR for a price.

Google is now actively lowering the PageRank of sites that deal in … Read more

The technology office of the federal government's Defense Information Systems Agency has gone on the record as saying that the defense procurement process needs to be altered in order to better mesh with open-source software. I agree 100 percent.

But it's not just federal procurement that needs to change. For anyone who has sold open-source software subscriptions into any enterprise, you know that legal and purchasing departments everywhere have a lot to learn about open source.

But at least the Defense Department is getting the picture. Fritz Schulz, who works in the office of the chief technology officer at the Defense Information Systems Agency, spoke on the topic last week at a Red Hat conference. Here's what he said, according to Government Computer News:

Although current policies adequately accommodate open-source acquisition, the requirements analysis that defense agencies undertake to get new software should be executed differently, "to allow for proper consideration of open source," he said.… Read more

I had a great lunch with associates from rSmart, Unicon, and MIT today at the JA-SIG Conference, and we talked about a vexing issue that plagues software, open source and proprietary alike (though it hurts the open source vendor more): the high cost of sales. (I credit John Lewis, Chief Software Architect, Unicon, for any intelligence in my musings, and take full blame for the inane shrapnel that is my personal contribution to the thread.)

The proprietary world's P&L operates much like the VC's: high, upfront return (license) to cover the expense that Purchasing puts vendors through to earn its business. (Repeat visits, RFPs, etc.) In other words, the proprietary vendor spends five figures on five deals to hopefully get a "home run" return on one of them to subsidize and exceed the costs.

Open source vendors operate differently, as Larry Augustin pointed out at OSBC. [PDF] Open source vendors are about volume in leads, with the leads finding their way back to the company to purchase. Four figures (or less, often) to close a deal, with the intention being that more deals within the pipe will close.… Read more