Such was the case last week, when news about the New York Times’ plans to start charging for digital subscriptions lit up Twitter and the blogosphere at the same time some thoughtful posts and news about corporate pricing policies and enterprise applications license negotiations.

A blog post from Harvard Business Review posed that the Times’ new policy is problematic beyond the simple fact that people no longer want to pay for their news:

When The New York Times announced its digital subscription plan, which begins today, it was met with a fair bit of skepticism and confusion. If it fails to live up to expectations, it will probably be seen as yet another nail in journalism’s coffin. However, such a failure could be indicative of something much simpler – a lack of understanding of the role that pricing plays in customer experience.

Meanwhile, the Perfect Customer Experience blog was praising Southwest Airlines for the simplicity of its rewards program:

While just about every airline (except maybe Virgin) is upcharging for snacks, water, pillows, luggage, smiles, the restroom key, movies … and while they are making it nearly impossible to use the rewards miles you earned, Southwest is removing the red tape. They just launched the program, finally returning to customers what all the other airlines once promised. If Southwest Airlines can do this, it indicates they have a management team that understands how to create an intentional, differentiated brand experience.

Indeed, it seemed many had pricing complexity and the customer experience on the mind last week. At Daring Fireball, John Gruber suggests the companies that turn to complex pricing schemes do so basically because they can:

Those companies that succeed with complex pricing schemes tend to be those with no competition (e.g. cable companies and land-line phone services) or those with a limited number of competitors, all of whom offer similarly complex pricing schemes.

Sound familiar? For buyers of enterprise applications the complexity of cable companies and land-line phone services is downright simple. The Secret CIO at Information Week laid out his frustrations with software licenses last week in a column of his (her?) own:

For each vendor, we were looking at an 80 percent to 90 percent discount from the list price. In what other market is an 80 percent discount the norm? “This new Lexus lists for $70,000, but we can get you into it for $14,000!” Let me guess: We now have to hunt through the contract for future fees that are based on the list price, right? More time spent negotiating maintenance and other aspects of the contract to avoid dependence on the five-times-higher list price.

For all the consolidation in the applications market, there are still many more choices than most people have with it comes to their cable provider. So why is it so complex and wouldn’t a simpler structure lead to a better customer experience? Do the CRM vendors listen to all the CRM analysts and vendors touting the importance of the customer experience?

Certainly the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS) has been buoyed in part by its simple per user/per month subscription payment plan. Of course, SaaS SLAs still need careful perusal. RightNow touts is Customer Bill of Rights to suggest that its listening.

Yet, when one turns to cloud infrastructure alone, licensing again rears its ugly head. IDC’s Amy Konary (who’s Twitter feed I owe a debt for some of these links) lays out the licensing complications of a cloud platform:

As CIOs start to put together their cloud platforms, the licensing model can also become a nightmare to manage- even if the cloud platform consists of infrastructure only (OS, backup/recovery, anti-virus) and doesn’t extend to middleware (challenging) or database/applications (super challenging).

We’ve done some coverage recently on the importance of the price of CRM applications, but less so how its complexity affects buying decisions. Have people had enough and what’s the alternative to the complicated negotiations, discounting, hidden fees and support and maintenance inherent in the process?

Right now today, I’m wondering how much that will influence purchases by potential customers and how (or whether) those competitors will respond.

The move has brought some very positive press for the company in the past 24 hours. It’s been called “a game-changing play in enterprise software” by Frank Scavo, “a step in the right direction” by Vinnie Mirchandani and “genuinely important” by Paul Greenberg. Those are just a few of the favorable reports.

Certainly RightNow’s “Cloud Services Agreement” provides benefits to software buyers: seat months similar to rollover minutes in the wireless industry for seasonal businesses; the ability to adjust the number of seats based on need; the ability to terminate contracts on an annual basis; cash credits for not meeting SLAs.

As Scavo writes:

RightNow’s move brings it closer to a model of pure utility computing, where the customer pays only for what he uses, as is the case with electrical utilities. Sure, your electrical utility levies some base charge to cover the cost of provisioning and maintaining the customer’s connection. But most of the cost of electrical service to the customer is usage-based. You use more, you pay more. You use less, you pay less.

Really, much of this is what SaaS CRM vendors have promised and touted all along but — as Gianforte noted yesterday — never delivered.

But are there really businesses out there that are paying for annual licenses for seasonal workers? If so, they should get someone else to negotiate their SaaS contracts.

Being able to get out of a contract each year is certainly an advantage over a three-year lock in, and way better than paying everything up front for a system that may not work out, a la on-premise. But I always figured signing up for a longer-term agreement meant a better deal for the buyer. Does that discount come off the table for RightNow buyers?

RightNow has introduced some flexibility into SaaS contracts and that’s a good thing. Yet, how much of a difference does that make in the decision process?

As Greenberg wrote:

What might have gotten lost in all the buzz around this effort was – companies are still going to be looking for functionality – first and foremost.  Then, after that, all things being equal, the differentiator is the relationship you have with the vendor, which of course, is reflected in the kind of contract you have with them.

Ken Harris, CIO of Shaklee, one of the customers RightNow brought on stage yesterday, said contracts can be a deal breaker for him. He said he’s backed out of some deals with SaaS vendors because of disagreements over the things RightNow is guaranteeing.

It seems to me more likely that rather than choosing RightNow over competitors thanks to the Cloud Services Agreement, they’ll decide which software they want and then demand these sorts of concessions from those competitors.

That’s just what Forrester’s Liz Herbet suggests:

Firms should ask their other SaaS vendors for similar terms and expect leading SaaS providers will follow RightNow’s lead.

So what’s in it for RightNow?  It will certainly shorten the sales cycle if all these items are taken out of the negotiation. Gianforte claimed the company already has one $1 million plus deal thanks to the agreements. But if buyers can ultimately get the same deals from RightNow’s competitors it’s not much of a competitive differentiator, whether those competitors offer these arrangements publicly or do it privately when negotiating contracts.

Enterprise software buyers have lost a lot of negotiation power due to all the consolidation in the industry. SaaS, cloud computing, third-party maintenance and the victory of SAP user groups and key accounts in SAP’s Premier Support fiasco gave them some of that power back. Looks like RightNow just gave them a little more.