Zuora Announces Z-Billing 2.0, The Most Powerful, Customizable and Easiest to Use Subscription Billing Service on the Market

Z-Billing 2.0 Adds 100 New Features Including Taxation; Immediate Availability for Zuora’s 100+ Customers

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, April 21, 2009 — Zuora, Inc., the fastest growing subscription billing and payments service, today announced Z-Billing 2.0, the most powerful and customizable on-demand billing platform available anywhere. Z-Billing 2.0 includes 100 new features to support customers with more power, more automation, and even greater ease of use. The new product also introduces a new tax module — Supported by partnerships with the leading taxation software companies Vertex, Inc., Sabrix and Avalara.

This major release comes less than one year after Zuora introduced its industry-leading Z-Billing 1.0 product to the market. Zuora also announced it has passed the 100 customer mark (see corresponding release “Subscription Billing Leader Zuora Adds 100 Customers in Just One Year“).

Growth of Subscriptions and the Business Cloud

In early 2008, Zuora recognized that the world was moving toward subscriptions. Subscriptions have many benefits to both businesses and their customers — little to no up-front investments, simple pay-as-you-go pricing, and flexibility to change payments and packages. The shift to the subscription model took off with a few industry disruptors like automobiles (Zipcar), movie rentals (Netflix), and software (salesforce.com).

Now these “disruptors” are becoming the norm, as companies like Starbucks and United Airlines launch subscription services and people can now subscribe to everything from socks-as-a-service (blacksocks.com) to electric cars-as-a-service (Better Place).

The subscription business model has seen a huge increase in popularity since the beginning of the year. IDC predicts that, by the end of 2009, 76% of organizations will use at least one SaaS-delivered service. Subscription/pay-as-you-go pricing is also becoming the defacto business model of cloud computing. Earlier this year, Zuora introduced the Business Cloud and launched the Z-Commerce Platform to make it easy for developers to monetize their cloud computing offerings. Developers can now get the power of the Business Cloud and plug commerce into their applications, all with just a few lines of code.

Cloud computing analyst Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research believes that subscription-based services will thrive in a downturn. “Zuora had the vision and saw the potential for subscriptions, establishing the new paradigm for on-demand billing. Companies now understand that billing is critical for their subscription businesses,” said Pombriant.

Today, a year after Zuora changed the landscape of on-demand subscription billing and payments with its flagship product, the company introduces Z-Billing 2.0.

“We founded Zuora with the expectation that subscription-based businesses would explode in the coming years — we’ve seen subscriptions take off even faster than we expected. You can now subscribe to everything from socks to software to movies,” said Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora. “With the new features and key partnerships, Z-Billing 2.0 sets the new standard for businesses developing a subscription service.”

Z-Billing 2.0: 100 Ways to Grow a Subscription Business

The 100 new features in Z-Billing 2.0 give companies more power to develop new pricing and packaging, more automation, and greater ease of use.

“With cloud computing, a telco-like subscription model with billing as a business-critical system is emerging as a key strategy,” said Elisabeth Rainge, Director, NGN Operations, IDC. “Zuora’s vision of delivering flexibility in business processes and billing rules is what subscription businesses need to grow and scale.”

Z-Billing 2.0 includes:

More Power. Z-Billing 2.0 provides 33 new features to increase revenues. With more billing, pricing and payment options that can be tailored to fit specific market segments, Z-Billing 2.0 makes it possible for companies to respond to market changes by offering services at the right price and terms.

More Automation. Z-Billing 2.0 provides 33 new features to eliminate manual processes. More mass updating tools, auto-sync capabilities, and workflow enable companies to streamline business operations. More integration options seamlessly connect business operations across websites, provisioning, accounting, CRM, and payment systems. Z-Billing 2.0’s logging and tracking capabilities provide automatic audit trails for compliance and security needs.

Even Easier to Use. Z-Billing 2.0 provides 33 new features that make your billing operations even easier. Zuora’s new UI makes it easy to manage the full customer subscription lifecycle by giving sales teams, accounting teams, and customers a 360-degree view of data. Real-time invoice and payment history, usage, and rollover data are now available with a few mouse-clicks.

New Taxation Module. Z-Billing 2.0 provides a new Taxation module that is easy to set up and supports all tax types including Sales and Use, Value Added (VAT), Goods and Services (GST), etc. Taxes can be applied to any address with the ability to report taxes to various jurisdictions. As well, Zuora is pleased to announce key partnerships with the leading sales tax software companies Sabrix, Vertex, and Avalara.

More information on new features and functionalities of Z-Billing 2.0 is available at zuorainternprd.wpengine.com/products.

“Z-Billing 2.0 provides more of the automation, flexibility, and power we need to grow our subscription Enterprise Source code hosting business,” said Jason Seed, CEO, CVSDude. “The new taxation module is especially useful to our global customers.”

“Taxation is hugely complicated; we’re excited to partner with Zuora in taking the burden of tax compliance off the shoulders of their customers so they can focus on growing their subscription businesses,” said Pam Kostka, Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing, Sabrix Inc.

Availability

Z-Billing 2.0 is available immediately. As a cloud-based application built on a multi-tenant architecture, all of Zuora’s 100 customers are already up and running on the latest product and have access to all of the newest features.

Zuora launched its first product, Z-Billing, in May 2008. Z-Billing is the first billing application designed specifically for subscription companies, giving them the flexibility and power to create, manage, and grow their business. Within one year, Zuora completed its suite of products, including Z-Payments, a complete payment solution built for subscription businesses that includes the ability to accept PayPal payments; Z-Force, the first billing and payment system fully integrated with salesforce.com and 100% native to the Force.com platform; Z-Commerce, the Business Cloud developer platform; and Z-Commerce for Facebook.

Zuora has more than 100 customers, including Cloud9 Analytics, Marketo, Box.net, and Sun Microsystems.

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora is the fastest-growing on-demand subscription billing and payment service. The Zuora platform changes the way subscription businesses manage and sell to customers, and allows them to bring new products to market in less time, with less hassle. Zuora is built from the ground up by SaaS industry visionaries and veterans from salesforce.com, WebEx, Accenture, Postini (now Google), and Oracle. The company is based in Redwood City, California. To learn more about Zuora, please visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.

October 10, 2014