Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Freemium Comes to Energy Management Software

Many vendors, such as Assistly, DropBox, JigSaw, LinkedIn, Pivotal Labs, Skype, and hundreds more, use the 'freemium' pricing approach. These vendors offer an internet-based software application that is free and designed for widespread adoption. This note highlights two, Noesis Energy and Energy Deck, that bring this approach to energy management software. 

These vendors generate revenue from customers that choose to pay for additional features. This approach provides customers with a way to use a product for free (often for years) before purchasing more advanced features.

This popular approach has now come to energy management software, which is one part of the Groom Energy Enterprise SmartGrid framework, a framework that allows energy managers to understand the interoperability of hardware and software systems for visibility, control, and management integration for enery of a single or multiple sites.

Noesis Energy and Energy Deck are two start-ups we have been following that are using a fremium model for software products that help companies with visibility and management integration. Neither product actually controls equipment or devices.
Other vendors, such as EnergyCap and Hara, also offer limited-time, free trials, but neither offers a free version that can be used for years.

Noesis Energy 

Founded in Austin, Texas in 2011 by serial entrepreneur Scott Harmon, Noesis Energy raised $14.5 million in venture financing. Noesis Energy has been in beta this summer with a free set of services, and plans to eventually offer premium services this fall. Free services include software tools, such as facility energy tracking by building; project tracking and information services, such as a database for energy-efficiency incentives; benchmarking information; and best practices. Premium services include advanced energy analysis and financial models, for which pricing has not yet been announced.

Energy Deck

Before founding U.K.-based Energy Deck, CEO Benjamin Kott spent five years at Google. Now he's bringing the Google approach to software application design and customer adoption to energy management. The free version of the product enables small and medium-size organizations (and even residential users) to track energy use for one building and up to three meters. Other features include project tracking and benchmarking.  Pricing is shown on the website and is based on the number of buildings, meters, projects, as well as other factors. The initial pricing level starts at $45 per month.

Each of these vendors offers promising software products to help facility and energy managers better understand and reduce energy costs. 

3 comments:

Joseph Broach said...

These are really some good quality software products which will in turn give you good services.

Small Business It Support London said...

Yes its true. Its best and useful energy management software. This type of software provide best services and facility for our work.

IT management software said...

Agreed that energy management software is very useful. My company has tried using a number of different IT management solutions over the past few months to meet our energy monitoring needs. So far it looks like AssetCentral is doing to the best job for us.