Industry Trend: RightNow redefines maintenance service

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RightNow Vows Lighter Clouds

By J. BONASIAPosted 03/04/2010 07:03 PM ET

RightNow Technologies (RNOW), a maker of online software for customer service and support, challenged rivals Thursday to follow its lead in giving corporate clients more flexibility in how they buy cloud, or Internet-delivered, applications.

RightNow specifically called out Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP) and Salesforce.com (CRM) for selling what the industry calls shelfware, which it says saddles buyers with paying for software licenses that never get used.

At a company event in San Francisco, RightNow announced a new form of contract that it calls a cloud services agreement. It gives clients the flexibility to add or subtract user seats monthly, as needed.

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