the ed sector... opportunity and challenges

Following up on the news about Uni's now having to pay for access to Nearmap.

The whole education sector is a great opportunity for the Nearmap product but it will be more challenging than the local council sector.

For councils Nearmap provides a cost saving, and from all reports the benefits outweigh the price - a compelling proposal to sell.

But for the ed. sector there will be no such cost benefit story to tell. It is a great learning/research resource (as I earlier posted) but it costs
- and is this cost something that education institutes are prepared to swallow?
- will the expectation that such a resource should be freely available cause resentment?
- perhaps a different sales structure might need to be considered?

It looks like the price might be more like a state gov. subscription $100,000 per annum. And considering this could be servicing 30,000 people plus at any institution I think this sounds fair.

But not everyone will have the same point of view. An interesting post on the Nearmap forum which demonstrates the challenge of selling the Nearmap story to this sector.

http://forum.nearmap.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=757

We shall see how this unfolds. My bet is that is Nearmap shall prevail but it is not going to be easy.

If anyone who has a better insight than me on the sector the thread is yours.

R