Last week we held a WoKa Euskadi meeting at our offices in Bilbao. Woka Euskadi is an initiative led by Innobasque, an non-profit organization to foster innovation in the Vasc region. Woka Euskadi was held simultaneously in 125 different locations and involved around 5,000 people. Panda was invited due to our focus in innovation.
Woka Eusdadi’s objective was to analyze alternatives and push forward innovative proposals to help fight the global recession. 20 people participated at Panda’s offices, including employees and outsiders such as Urko Zurutuza, Phd. In Computer Sciences and teacher at the Mondragon University and Itziar Algora, Vice-Dean at Science & Technology’s University of the Vasc Country.
Some of the proposals that the team put forward included: increasing innovation efforts through public administrations funding; fostering technical training aligned with companies’ real needs by universities, encouraging work ethics based on a culture that rewards personal efforts and accomplishments, involving employees in companies’ strategic thinking; and Governments to seek long term goals that go beyond governing mandates. Innobasque will present the global conclusions of the various sessions on June 18th.
Innovation is at the very core of Panda. Innovation is not an abstract concept: it involves “seeking solutions to everyday issues by doing things differently”. To innovate is to think forward, to be “One Step Ahead”, as our tag line says. It is an attitude, a … contagious attitude. We are fully committed to innovation. Furthermore, with initiatives like this one, we work hand in hand with other constituencies to improve our society. I am firmly convinced that it is key that public and private organizations, jointly with the broader society, work together to try and solve the global issues that affect all of us.
Although the “free” model has existed for a long time (remember Gillette’s razor blades as early as the beginning of the 20th century), the Internet has favored the development of free products and services. Very often, users expect to get products or services without paying(whether this expectation is justified or not, I’ll let you decide). A lot of people have questioned this business practice, wondering if it is sustainable to offer a service that costs millions to develop for free. Chris Andersonin particular has written the following articles: “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” and “The economics of giving it away”.
From a business perspective, nobody doubts any more that there is a “free model” that is sustainable and that, while providing quality services to users, can generate wealth for both companies’ employees and shareholders. Think about Google,Skype, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and many others that have either a profitable business or have so many users that few doubt they will have it in the very near future. In the security sector we also find many examples, among others, Virustotal, a Spanish company whose services are used by hundreds of thousands every day around the world.
Chris Anderson refers to various free models: i) cross subsidy: giving a mobile phone or a razor for free while charging for a line rental or hoping for selling millions of blades in the future; ii) ad supported: charging for media ads while providing content for free; iii) fremium: upselling; iv) marketing: free samples to generate word of mouth; v) digital economics that lower manufacturing and distribution costs to nearly zero, as in music; and vi) gift economy: Wikipedia.
In the security sector many have used the Fremium model. The term is a combination of “free” and “premium” (described in Wikipedia), defined in 2006 by Fred Wilson: “Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base”.
These models generate great brand awareness, transform satisfied users into prescribers within their area of influence, increase users willingness to share their honest feedback about a product or service and create a “club” effect of users that are thankful to the brand. Nevertheless, it is clear that the model is only sustainable in any business if there is a clear monetization strategy behind and companies are aware that the return on investment will take longer than in the traditional model.
At Panda, we have recently launched a beta for a new product that we intend offer for free for the long run: Panda Cloud Antivirus. The product’s philosophy has many components that make it very well suited for free distribution from a business perspective. The product is designed to benefit from the community knowledge to minimize malware infections. Offering it for free is our way to pay back to the community its contribution to the knowledge database that sustains the platform. Additionally, we are eliminating switching costs to new users to test our new protection model.
Panda Cloud Antivirus takes advantage of Collective Intelligence (a Panda proprietary technology) that consists in an automated platform that detects, classifies and disinfects malware. Collective Intelligence reduces the time required to process new malware samples. Panda Cloud Antivirus reduces the dependence on updating local signature files to a minimum. As we have been saying since late 2006, when we first launched this technology, we believe that cloud-based detection is the only way to adequately protect our users given the massive increase in malware in recent years which has made the traditional antivirus model exclusively based in signatures obsolete. Not only is the signature model of AV not fighting off malware quickly enough, but its impact on PC performance is so large that antivirus software has earned a reputation as heavy, and a general strain on customer satisfaction. This video explains how the product works and the benefits for the users:
At Panda, we are convinced that Panda Cloud Antivirus has all the ingredients to become an example for the new antivirus motel within the security landscape in the next few years. The markets’ reaction following the beta launch is tremendously encouraging: many agree with us that that this protection model and philosophy is the way to go and the product itself has received very good initial reviews (as The Tech Herald, CNET, US Today, PCMag, etc.). As you join our global community of users, don’t hesitate to provide feedback on the product so that we can continually improve it. You can do it through our beta area or through the Panda Cloud Antivirus blog that Pedro Bustamante, our Senior Research Advisor, manages. We have also set up a Twitter handle for the product for instant answers to questions and the latest updates.
Last week we held a WoKa Euskadi meeting at our offices in Bilbao. Woka Euskadi is an initiative led by Innobasque, an non-profit organization to foster innovation in the Vasc region. Woka Euskadi was held simultaneously in 125 different locations and involved around 5,000 people. Panda was invited due to our focus in innovation.![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.pandainsight.com/en/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
Although the “free” model has existed for a long time (remember Gillette’s razor blades as early as the beginning of the 20th century), the Internet has favored the development of free products and services. Very often, users expect to get products or services without paying(whether this expectation is justified or not, I’ll let you decide). A lot of people have questioned this business practice, wondering if it is sustainable to offer a service that costs millions to develop for free. 