The Open Market for Components

Understand the opportunity and learn more about the open market for components. Find out why Businesses all over the world are turning to components and how you could be sitting on a goldmine. Components are now accepted within the architecture of almost all the major technology platforms allowing you to reach a new and fast growing market of IT professionals.

Q. Which products are suitable?
A. ComponentSource is interested in any Microsoft .NET™, WPF, WCF, WF, Silverlight™, COM™, J2EE™/Java™/EJB™, AJAX/JavaScript, Adobe Air, Flex, Flash, Eclipse, RCP and VCL™, components that you have developed. We are also interested in any development tools, add-ins or plug-ins for major IDEs and in tools that help manage other products - like SharePoint, Exchange Server, SQL Server or CRM packages like Dynamics etc. We are also distributing and reselling tools or utilities aimed at database, network management and other IT administration tasks.

Q. How do I know if my product is in demand?
A. The best place to look for an indication of likely product demand is our current bestselling product list updated every day on our Web site.

Q. What industries would be most interested in my technology?
A. It depends on the type of component you have and whether it is for a niche market or mass market.

Q. How do I know if my product(s) can be horizontally marketed?
A. Ask yourself whether this is a general component that can be used in all industries and have mass appeal for example accounting components can be used in all organizations in all different industries. Look at the business value your component can bring and position it in that way.

Q. Do you take applications?
A. No. ComponentSource specializes in software components, software developer kits (SDKs), software development tools and tools or utilities for IT professionals - such as database, network, security and IT adminstrators. However where we sell a particular component from an application we may also carry the full product too.

Q. Do you take shareware?
A. ComponentSource sells to professional developers, IT professionals and to a corporate audience. We only want professional, commercial software components and development tools. All software needs to go through a quality assurance process before being allowed on the Web site. Some of our bestselling products today started out as a shareware or freeware product and we can help transition your current shareware or freeware product into the commercial software marketplace.

Q. What is the market for my product(s) - how many sales can I expect to make?
A. This is the "million dollar" question that nobody can answer. There are many variables that must be considered to even start thinking about predicting sales. We can tell you though that our bestselling Publishers are selling hundreds of units per month and those in the top 100 bestseller list are selling tens of units per month.

Q. How can you help to market my software to corporate organizations?
A. For corporate developers ComponentSource offers services that facilitate the adoption of software components. Our corporate customer reuse services include Electronic Software Delivery technology which means developers can evaluate and procure software components immediately to meet project deadlines 24/7.

The International Call Center and our user-friendly Component Repository support this service. Other services we offer address corporate buying behavior. These include Corporate Account for fast secure online purchasing, Online Quotes (an automatic quote-generation system to help purchasing departments in large corporations track orders), Online Receipts - providing proof of purchase for auditing bodies and CD/DVD backup - to resolve audit issues and to assist customers with limited Internet bandwidth. We also provide our corporate customers with the opportunity to buy source code escrow licenses from our participating publishers and this gives them additional assurance when using those products.