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Comment by leftnode | Hacker News Reader

Is there any value in companies like Parse selling their software as installable on your own servers (i.e., GitHub Enterprise).

I ask, rhetorically, because I built a somewhat competing service that isn't doing too well and I'm looking to make it so you can install it on your own servers.

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Your best bet would be to follow the OpenX model - Release a community friendly version of your software that anyone could install on their servers, (would be good if it was open source; not necessarily free though) and also at the same time, target the Enterprise guys with a hefty premium plan, by offering a hosted service,with some extra features and with Service uptime Guarantees. I see no reason why you wouldn't be hitting the gold pot, this way.

Yes. I think that is a useful business. If you could make a system that was scalable and provided an API like parse that sounds like something interesting. Have virtual machine images you can host. The hard part would be figuring out how to simplify scaling it out. That is one really nice thing about hosted solutions. I can forget the IT. I'd be happy to work in a middle ground where i traded the IT effort for additional control/changes/features.

Well I think as this issue with Parse shows, you can forget about the IT until you can't. If your app is down due to a mistake like this, it's even more frustrating because you have so little control on the situation.

It would be valuable for me.

We have a product that relies heavily on Parse. The model is a white labeled solution. We currently have a potential client that wants to host everything and we are kind of stuck with Parse. I could simply charge more if there was a customer hosted solution.

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