Zuora Caps Massive Year of Product Innovation with December '10 Release

Zuora’s monthly innovation engine delivers 23rd consecutive month of new capabilities, further enhancing the most robust SaaS subscription billing and commerce solution in the market

Redwood Shores, CA — December 21, 2010 — Zuora, the subscription billing and commerce leader, today announced immediate availability of its December ’10 release, delivering the 23rd straight month of consistent product innovation to its customer base. Each month, Zuora has delivered enhancements to its entire product line, which in 3 years has become the most robust SaaS subscription billing and commerce engine in the market. With the December ’10 Release, Zuora customers can now:

  • Manage the quote to cash to renewals process in Zuora and Salesforce CRM with Z-Force 4.0;
  • Monetize Force.com ISV’s apps with Z-Force Checkout for the AppExchange;
  • Provide ultimate subscription flexibility with custom billing frequencies;
  • Perform advanced reporting and accounting integration with custom fields on invoice items; and
  • Override default product catalog prices via the API.

Zuora’s December ’10 release wraps up the most prolific year of product innovation in the company’s history to address the rapid growth of the Subscription Economy. Subscription billing has become the catalyst behind a massive transformation occurring in several multi-billion dollar markets and is positioned to be one of the most strategic enterprise applications over the next decade. Venture Beat estimates the whole recurring subscription market is worth around $7.1 billion yearly — of which Zuora has already captured $1 billion.

A Year of Product Innovations Across All of Zuora’s Core Subscription Products

During 2010, Zuora delivered updates on a monthly basis to its suite of Z-Billing, Z-Payments and Z-Force applications and Z-Commerce platform. Every release is designed based on guidance from customers — world-class companies like Marketo, LiveOffice, Reed Business Information Open Range Communications, InsideView, Ning and hundreds of others. And best of all, with the SaaS model, all of the new functionality is available to all customers, instantly, and fully documented in the Zuora Knowledge Center.

“Zuora is our long term partner because the Zuora team consistently demonstrates its ability to innovate every month to help us deliver on our goals,” said Lisa Smith, Director of Business Operations, Bitgravity. “Not only does Zuora respond rapidly to our input, but we benefit from the network effect of Zuora’s work with some of the leading subscription businesses.”

Significant innovations delivered across each product line in 2010 include:

Z-Billing — Zuora’s Flagship Product for Complete Subscription Billing and Commerce

Z-Billing application was named Best Software-as-a-Service Finalist by the 2010 CODiE Awards. Zuora was the only billing and subscription commerce solution to receive such honors. In 2010 Zuora enhanced this industry leading solution month after month, with new subscription management, globalization, and customization features including:

  • Advanced subscription management capabilities such as subscription auto-renewal, evergreen subscriptions, subscription previews, and key subscription billing metrics like Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) at the customer, subscription and product levels;
  • Globalization capabilities with support for multi-currency and localized invoice formatting to support international customers; and
  • Customization capabilities with custom roles and permissions, custom fields for accounts, subscriptions, and products, invoice item adjustments, and custom invoice charge sorting.

Z-Payments – The Most Complete Payment Solution for the Subscription Economy

Z-Payments is the most flexible and powerful payment and commerce solution for subscription businesses. In November, Zuora released Z-Payments 3.0 with over 50 new capabilities to automate subscription payments so that even the most sophisticated operations can be managed easily, from invoice to cash, all entirely in the cloud. Some of the new enhancements include:

  • Advanced subscription payments capabilities including processing subscription payments for all customers at once, or group them by customer, payment gateway or billing cycle as well as making payment adjustments in real-time and down to individual payment line items;
  • Payment notification capabilities including the ability to proactively email customers about upcoming payments, expired credit cards and payment failures based on notification rules with the ability to customize email templates for every scenario; and
  • Customization capabilities to setup multiple payment gateways, manage multiple payment currencies, and add custom fields to every object, anywhere in the payment process.

Z-Force — Bringing Pricing, Quoting, Orders and Renewals into Salesforce

Z-Force allows Zuora’s customers to manage the quote to cash to renewals process in both Zuora and Salesforce CRM. Z-Force is a 100% native Salesforce Force.com solution, and in 2010 Zuora delivered two major releases to seamlessly connect Salesforce’s front-end applications and Zuora’s subscription billing and payments platform. New innovations include:

  • Pricing and packaging for subscription and usage-based products and services;
  • Quotes and orders that have multiple products and recurring variables;
  • Subscription changes such as upgrades, downgrades, and add-on subscriptions (e.g. add 10 seats to an existing subscription);
  • Renewals, which can account for the majority of revenue for subscription businesses;
  • Visibility into subscription business metrics like MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue); and
  • Real time collaboration with Salesforce Chatter.

In addition, Zuora introduced and released enhancements to its industry editions for Media and Cloud, and made announcements with key strategic ecosystem partners, including VMware and Microsoft.

Z-Commerce for Media — The First Online Commerce Solution for Publishers

Z-Commerce for Media, launched in 2009, was the first on-demand subscription commerce platform for publishers to monetize online content and media assets. During 2010, enhancements were made to make it easier for publishers to price and package, meter and bill for any media unit (e.g. pageviews, articles, downloads) and manage the end-to-end customer lifecycle from the initial subscription order to subscription changes to subscription renewals.

Z-Commerce for the Cloud — Enabling the Business Model for Cloud Computing

Z-Commerce for the Cloud was launched in June 2010, enabling cloud and service providers to automate metering, pricing and billing including the ability to bill for a multitude of pre-built cloud units, resource tracking and metering capabilities, and pricing model support for every cloud business model — From reservation and location-based pricing to free trials, upgrades, and sophisticated product bundles.

Z-Commerce for the Cloud —VMware Edition

In August 2010 at VMworld, Zuora launched Z-Commerce for the Cloud — VMware Edition to power cloud commerce for VMware’s service providers leveraging VMware’s vCloud Service Director™ with out-of-the-box support for VMware’s cost models — Allocation, Reservation, and Pay-As-You-Go — And automated subscription management and billing capabilities.

Zuora Toolkit for Microsoft Windows Azure

In partnership with Microsoft, in June 2010, Zuora launched the Zuora Toolkit for Microsoft Windows Azure to help developers and ISVs meter, price, and bill for their Windows Azure platform cloud-based applications and services. Zuora was selected by Microsoft as the first subscription billing vendor to help Microsoft advance its cloud computing strategy, of which, subscription commerce is a critical component for developers and ISVs to monetize the applications they build on Windows Azure.

“Being a Zuora customer means that I know I always have the most advanced subscription billing and payments features and capabilities,” said Lisa Bailey, VP Business Operations, InsideView. “The Zuora SaaS platform delivers us innovation every month rather than making us wait for ‘the next big release.’ We’re pleased to be a Zuora customer because they understand how important that innovation is to our business.”

“Our monthly innovation cycle means enhancements are happening in real time so our customers benefit immediately rather than a 6 or 12 month release cycle,” said Tien Tzuo, CEO at Zuora. “Our commitment to delivering on this timeline continues to be the most aggressive and consistent in the SaaS market. And our plans for 2011 are even more aggressive as the Subscription Economy is primed to hit an inflection point in its growth across multi-billion dollar industries.”

Additional Resources

About Zuora, Inc.

Zuora’s subscription billing and commerce platform changes the way subscription businesses manage and sell to customers, allowing them to bring new products to market in less time, with more flexibility and less hassle. Zuora customers are up and running within 90 days and often recognize 200% ROI within weeks. Zuora is built from the ground up by SaaS industry visionaries and veterans from salesforce.com, WebEx, Accenture, Google, eBay, Oracle and Vitria. Zuora customers include Reed Business Information, Coremetrics, InsideView, Marketo, Ricoh, Box.net, Xactly, and Cloud Central. To learn more about Zuora, please visit zuorainternprd.wpengine.com.

October 10, 2014
Also of Interest: