

Ask HN: How to determine legitmate enterprise features? - chrisdotcode

Besides &#x27;support&#x27;, I&#x27;m not sure what should offer to enterprise users. @patio11 says that I should charge more and have enterprise, but I don&#x27;t know what big companies want in particular that the basic or premium plans don&#x27;t cover (or, in truth, what you can get away selling to them).<p>Enterprise features always seem shrouded in a &#x27;contact us&#x27; black box, and so there doesn&#x27;t seem to be a de-facto solution as to what features should be offered. Granted ,there <i>isn&#x27;t</i> a one-size-fits all anyway, but I&#x27;m sure there are generalities that can be picked up on.
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wikwocket
There are some key terms that immediately signal "enterprise solution" that I
know of:

\- Single sign on (integrating authentication/authorization with other tools)

\- Auditing (letting them track every action their users take)

\- White-labeling (removing all your branding in exchange for theirs)

\- Maintenance (charging additional ~20% of yearly invoice for
bugfixes/support/integration assistance)

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mtmail
ideas, though you really should tell us what your product is so we don't have
to guess:

\- yearly invoices instead of monthly credit card charges

\- thirdparty authentication (e.g. their LDAP/Active directory), or other user
management, multi-user setups, ability for an admin to wipe all data of a
employee that leaft

\- on premises installation

\- everything in their brand colors, even if it's an internal tool

~~~
chrisdotcode
As stated, I wanted to see which features were generic to enterprise in
general.

Thank you!

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logn
Indemnity in the case of IP infringement.

Source code escrow.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_escrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_escrow)

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ukigumo
What are you selling?

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chrisdotcode
I'm going to be selling a B2B SaaS. Rather than be hyper-specific, I'm
wondering if there's a list of highest conversion and most wanted enterprise
features to sell?

If support is common amongst enterprise tiers, I'm sure there are some other
things as well.

~~~
ukigumo
Ok. The reason I was asking is that it depends on what scratch you will
itching (eh, I'm funny).

Generally speaking, think of it this way: I can buy from multiple vendors,
some of which show up in some magic quadrant report which my CTO reads. Why
would I pick your product instead?

The usual good reasons are that you can provide me with professional services
to do the integration, educate users, participate in project delivery, etc,
but essentially that you are able to somehow remove some degree of risk for me
and the company. You will most likely need to show some evidence of compliance
to best practices for security, data privacy and segregation.... well depends
on what you product does and what company you are selling to, for sure, but
think of the PCI and Data Protection Act's guidelines at a bare minimum even
if not directly applicable.

Specifically around support, I will want to know what are your SLAs including
MTTR, MTBF and availability to begin with, and then I expect you to sell me 2
or 3 support coverage contracts (bronze, silver, gold) and offer me a
possibility to design my own (platinum) if I need better. See Google's GCE
page for instance:
[https://cloud.google.com/support/](https://cloud.google.com/support/)

Hope this helps you somewhat, but without knowing more it will be hard for me
to get into any more detail.

~~~
napoleond
Jumping in here since you seem to have some experience in this: what about on-
premise installation? I understand that's often a differentiator for
enterprise but how do those work? Is it just distributed as a VM image? Who is
responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of that VM?

~~~
NeutronBoy
Depends how you set it up.

(I'll caveat below by saying that when I talk about 'enterprise', we're
talking about >500 employees and hundreds of millions in revenue annually.)

In many cases, they'll have their environment set up with standard *nix and
Windows SOEs. You'll work with their admins to configure your software, and
you'll direct them how to integrate it into their environment (DNS, etc).
You'll need to think about backups, security, access management, and how all
of this will integrate with their existing requirements.

Support arrangements differ, for example if you have an SQL DB underneath your
software they might want it on their standard image, in which case you'll have
to deploy and configure your software accordingly. Typically, they'll be
responsible for the maintenance of the platforms, and you'll be the support
for the software. No enterprise will simply deploy a VM image you hand to them
(unless you're Oracle or MS).

You'll also have to provide other support materials, so their helpdesk can
support their end-users.

As others have mentioned, you'll be agreeing to SLAs with them (eg a Priority
1 incident will need immediate phone support, P2 incidents need
acknowledgement within 24 hours, and so on). You'll be issuing a yearly
invoice most likely.

You'll have to agree to their standard IT services contract, and because
you're a small vendor you probably won't get much say in the way of changes.
Depending on how large your contract is (north of ~$50-100k perhaps?), you'll
need to make sure you can comply with any of their insurance requirements
(things like public liability, etc). You might also have to demonstrate
financial stability, both historically, and into the future (with a business
strategy, plans, etc)

TLDR: Enterprise companies can seem super hardcore about this if you're used
to dealing with small shops.

~~~
napoleond
Very interesting, thanks! The VM notion came from the way github distributes
their enterprise offering--you're saying most large companies wouldn't like
that?

What if the DB tier isn't standard SQL? Will that be a barrier? (I assume the
receiving IT dept doesn't get involved until very late in/after the sales
process, but presumably they could still put a wrench in things if they find
the deployment too complex.)

