Prosimo wants its enterprise clients to spend less on connectivity and more on applications and services. So, it’s ripped a page from VMware’s playbook and decided to make its multi-cloud networking (MCN) product free. Yep, that’s right, free.
Its pitch admittedly sounds like a gimmick at first. But as Prosimo’s Senior Director of Product Navjyoti Sharma told Silverlinings, there is an industry precedent for such a strategy. He pointed to VMware’s decision in 2008 to make its EXSi hypervisor for virtual machine management free. At the time, Gartner analysts said the move would provide an incentive for companies who hadn’t virtualized already to do so.
Prosimo is similarly trying to disrupt the cloud industry by shifting the focus for enterprises from that foundational connectivity layer to the actual apps and services that can deliver business outcomes.
“Everyone keeps saying the center of gravity has moved to the cloud. But there’s a lot of cost that’s associated with just getting there and a large part of that is connectivity,” Sharma explained. “If we can democratize that, we feel like there’ll be a lot of disruptive innovation possible.”
To be clear, Prosimo isn’t going to cover anyone’s Amazon Web Services or Azure bill. Instead, it is the company’s networking solution which connects those disparate cloud resources that will be free.
Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), told Silverlinings that the free offer includes connectivity across three regions regardless of the cloud provider. Beyond that, though, clients will have to pay. Still, this “allows people to get started with a new technology without having to pay up front,” he said.
Sharma acknowledged that if network connectivity was the only product Prosimo had to offer, providing its MCN service for free would be a “irresponsible.” But that’s not the case – it also peddles a range of zero-trust network access, policy management, visibility and other tools. With customers already onboarded to its system via the free connectivity offer, Prosimo will actually have more of an opportunity to upsell its own services, Sharma and Head of Marketing Mehul Patel argued.
Sharma claimed the cloud ecosystem is “aligned” behind Prosimo’s idea. “AWS loves this, Azure loves this. Because when I give foundation connectivity away for free, it just drives up consumption of their cloud-native services.”
But in terms of who could be negatively impacted by its move, the pair pointed to rival vendors across the multi-cloud networking, virtual routing and mesh arenas. Think Cisco, Aviatrix, Alkira and F5.
Analyst angle
Bob Laliberte, practice director at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), told Silverlinings that its research shows more than 90% of organizations say they’re using multiple public cloud providers, with more than half using them in a “meaningful way.” MCN tools like Prosimo’s can help companies overcome complexity by providing an abstraction layer, but he noted that since MCN is an emerging technology “many companies may not have budget allocated” for it.
“Providing multi-cloud networking via a freemium model should accelerate the adoption by removing the cost hurdle” and “is [a] solid strategy to gain market share and then be able to upsell additional L4-7 capabilities,” he said, adding that MCN rivals will be watching like a hawk to see how the move impacts their sales.
Gartner Distinguished Analyst Andrew Lerner said that while it might seem counterintuitive, Prosimo’s move could actually boost the overall market. “I liken it to 'kids eat free on Tuesdays,' meaning if a restaurant gets a family in the habit of eating on Tuesdays because kid’s eat free, it likely sets a pattern of behavior that benefits other restaurants.”
But McGillicuddy pointed out that, at least for cloud providers, it won’t be all upside. “Most enterprises rely on the networking functions and services of their individual cloud providers to build out hybrid and multi-cloud networks. Prosimo is now giving away its multi-cloud alternative to those native solutions from the cloud providers.”
If Prosimo’s offer moves the needle in terms of market share, rivals could be forced to respond, Lerner said. Right now, the only competitor that has dabbled with freebies is Alkira, which launched a freemium visibility-only tier last year, he said.
Either way, Lerner cautioned success for Prosimo isn’t a given.
“It is way too early to say definitively, because how they execute in the market – in the real world – will determine the impact. We’ve seen freemium offerings that had near-zero market impact, and freemium offerings that re-defined user expectations and disrupted markets permanently,” he concluded.