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Salesforce is considering huge discounts on what it calls its ‘greatest product ever’

Ever since last year’s release of Wave, its first data analytics platform, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been all over it, even calling it “the greatest product Salesforce has ever built.”

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Salesforce said during last earnings call that Wave has signed up some big customers too, including Tyco and Barclays.

“I don't think there's a customer that I've spoken to this quarter who hasn't been interested in the Analytics Cloud, and I can't imagine a Salesforce customer that's not going to end up with the Analytics Cloud,” Benioff said.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at Dreamforce 2013
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Robert Galbraith/ Reuters

But one of the common complaints about Salesforce Wave has often been its high price: Reports from CMSWire and InformationWeek say the license fee just to run the infrastructure necessary for Wave can cost $40,000 every month — that's before the user licenses, which cost $125 or $250 per user per month, according to CMSWire.

That puts it way out of range of smaller businesses.

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Salesforce may want to solve this issue, at least with its Wave platform, as it’s reported to be considering a new pricing strategy, according to a new Morgan Stanley note on Thursday.

“On Wave Analytics, the incremental news was that Salesforce.com is experimenting with pricing and thinking of removing the upfront platform license, leaving just the monthly subscription fees, as a way to drive wider adoption,” it said.

Salesforce declined to comment on this, or disclose the amount it typically charges for the upfront platform license.

It’s unclear how much revenue Wave has been driving so far, as Salesforce continues to loop in Wave’s revenue under the “Salesforce1 Platform and Other” segment.  Salesforce acknowledges that Wave’s revenues “were not significant for the three months ended April 30, 2015” in its earnings report.

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That’s understandable considering Wave just launched last October. It takes time to sell new software to companies, and it could take even longer to actually recognize the full revenue in its earnings.

But Salesforce also warns in its 10-Q, “The markets for our Analytics Cloud and Communities Cloud remain relatively new and it is uncertain whether our efforts will ever result in significant revenue for us.”

Perhaps, we'll find out more about it next week, when Salesforce reports its earnings on Aug. 20.

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