There is no such thing as a homogenous "enterprise" that leads to a certain level of software support services needs or that is per se 'suitable' for purchased licenses. If the marketing plan is based on wrong assumptions, then it might be counterproductive.
+1
* You have smallest (1 person), small, medium and large enterprises as well as corporations
In terms of market research, those are grouped as SOHO, SMB (USA), SME
(Europe), and Enterprise. Typically, neither field of endeavour nor
organisation type are relevant.
The Australian Tax Office defines a small business as one which has a
gross annual revenue of less than AU$10,000,000 (US$6,952,149).
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has a different set of criteria, and
definitions:
* Micro-business: employs between 0 & 4 people;(^3)
* Small business: employs between 5 & 19 people;
* Medium business: employs between 20 & 199 people;
* Large business: employs more than 200 people;
The European Commission defines an SME as having less than 250 employees
and an annual revenue of less than 50,000,000 Euros (US$56,527,469). It
further subdivides that into:
* Micro Enterprise: less than 10 employees;
* Small enterprise: Between 10 and 49 employees;
* Medium sized enterprise: Between 50 and 249 employees;
* Large enterprise: 250 or more employees;
The UK uses the same definitions as the European Commission.
In the United States. the _Small Business Administration_ (SBA) defines
a small business as having under 500 employees, but _Congress_, and most
States define a small business as having less than 20 employees. The SBA
has a category _Micro_Business, which is defined as an organisation with
between 1 and 9 employees.
In 2011, 90% of the organisations in the United States had less than 20
employees. In 2017, that figure had dropped to 89%. OTOH, the number of
firms with zero employees, rose between those two years. (Virtually
nobody pays attention to firms with zero employees, so those numbers are
usually removed from the data, before any statistical analysis is done.)
In 2017, 98% of the firms in the United States had fewer than 100
employees.These accounted for roughly 48% of the US workforce.
Micro-Business accounted for 75% of the firms, but only 11% of the
employees.
In 2017, 40% of all organisations operated from home.
In 2015, 99% of the organisations in Europe employed less than 250 people.
In 2018, In the United Kingdom, private-sector (^1) organisations:
* 99.9% organisations employed less than 250 people;
* 0.6% are medium sized business --- employ between 50 and 250 people;
* 4% are small business --- employ between 10 and 49 employees;
* 95% are micro-business --- employ less than 10 employees;
* 76% are single person enterprises. (FWIW, numerically, this is the
fastest growing business size.)
In 2018, in Australia:
* 97.7% of the firms were either micro-business or small business. This
group was responsible for 50% of the Australian GDP;
* 2.2% of firms were medium business;
* 0.2% of firms were large business;
The rest of the world follows the same basic pattern:
* There are studies from the 1960s and 1970s that suggest that the
organisations within the Underground Economy follow the breakdown ---
90%+ are micro-business;
* Nobody has reliable data on nano-business. Most tax authorities treat
it as part of the Underground Economy;
As a general rule of thumb, the more employees, the higher the gross
revenue of an organisation. However, neither productivity, nor
contribution to gross revenue necessarily increase, as the number of
employees increases.
Concluding: An "enterprise edition" would be as misleading as a "personal
edition". Thus, my suggestion is to not differentiate by the user profile, but
rather by the user needs and service requirements.
The popular conception of "Enterprise" is that it is a big corporation.
However, governments around the world call any commercial outfit an
enterprise, even if it is one person who rents a desk at WeWork.
I doubt that the owners of that 40% of business in the US that operate
from home, would call themselves an enterprise. Alan Weiss might,
because his annual billings are well into the 8 digits --- all working
as a one-person company, out of his home office. However, as far as SOHO
and SMBs goes, he is the exception.
Thus, why not establishing a LibreOffice brand for ecosystems partners like:
That is what TDF is attempting to do, by creating the branding:
* _LibreOffice Personal Edition_;
* _LibreOffice Enterprise Edition_;
Most of the discussion is about the correct name to be used for
either/both of those brand names.
What LibreOffice is facing, is a history of equating libre with gratis.
Historically, too many proponents of FLOSS have argued that the the TCO
of FLOSS is lower, because it is gratis, with the proposition been
presented in terms of financial cost.
As one of the slides in Italo's presentation implies, who owns the
digital content, and resulting work-product, is going to become a major
issue. With SAAS contracts, the effective owner of that data is whoever
provides the service --- the organisation that receives the money. With
a self-hosted cloud, the SMB can take advantage of the virtues of the
cloud, without the risks involved with third party ownership of the data.
Eliminate anything and everything related to money, in doing
presentations of FLOSS, where the point is marketing.
If you are training people on using FLOSS, then show them how to use
Calc to make a million dollars in the stock market, without starting
with a billion dollars.
What the LibreOffice Ecosystem is facing, is that when you tell people
something is gratis, it is extremely difficult to persuade them to part
with any money.
1) Unlike the US, and most other countries, the UK all but ignores
government, and public-sector organisations, in their business statistics.
3) Organisations might have zero employees, for any number of reasons.
If you want more data about them, go study _The Panama Papers_, and
similar leaks from the world of private finance.
jonathon
