Back in November of 2005, we officially released RetailEdge 8.0. Since that time, we have been very busy improving the product and releasing a steady stream of software maintenance releases. During the last two years, we have issued 17 updates. With each maintenance release, our goal was to fix program bugs and to polish the product. In addition these updates also and added new features and functionality. All at no additional cost to you!
Now, 26 months later, it is time for us to move on. We are announcing the "retirement" of RetailEdge 8.0 and are busy working on RetailEdge 8.0.18 which is our last planned release of the 8.0 product family. This release will include a number of new features including a new Vendor Manager with "instant report" tabs for sales history, receiving history, and purchase orders.
We will now be turning our focus to RetailEdge 8.1 and are pleased to introduce you to a new product development and product life cycle process. Traditionally, new software releases take years to plan and develop (e.g. our RetailEdge 8.0 release cycle took over three years). During these long development cycles, customers have to wait for new program features and capabilities.
With RetailEdge 8.1, we are announcing our new Software Maintenance Plan. For a small monthly fee, customers can automatically receive regular program updates. These updates will include basic maintenance fixes but will also include a steady stream of new program functionality and features.
This Software Maintenance Plan will allow us to continually improve the program and distribute these improvements out to our customers in a timely fashion. We want our customers to benefit from new features immediately instead of having to wait for years until the "next big release" is complete.
By getting rid of the traditional "big software update", we also think we can save our customers money. Typically major program updates can be expensive. Expensive to purchase, expensive to install, expensive to learn, and expensive to train employees. Because of this expense and headache, a lot of customers choose not to upgrade their software and they miss out on beneficial new features.
We hope our new Software Maintenance Plan will make it easier for our customers to receive new product releases and to train employees on the new features. The idea is that a series of small incremental changes, spread out over time, is easier to absorb and understand than a single big change.
We also hope the Software Maintenance Plan fee structure will be attractive to our customers. It's designed to allow businesses to spread out costs over a longer period of time and avoid large "one-time" upgrade costs.
For Existing RetailEdge customers RetailEdge 8.1 will be offered in three different levels Bronze, Silver and Gold.
Level: Bronze
Price: No Additional Charge
What's Included: All Releases up to and including 8.0.18. No future feature enhancements.
Level: Silver (Software Maintenance Plan)
Price: $5 / Workstation / Month
What's Included: Automatically Downloaded Software Updatesincluding new features and bug fixes (RetailEdge 8.1).
Level: Gold (Enhanced Service Plan)
Price: $45 / Location / Month
Automatically Downloaded Software Updates including new features and bug fixes (RetailEdge 8.1) Plus Enhanced Service Plan