| The IP issue is probably the top question from companies we talk to. It may very well be the killer for this webapp, and we don't have a good technical solution at the moment. However much we encrypt, the customer's IP is going to sent to our Cloud anyway. This reminds us of Dropbox in a way. The non-technical "trust" factor seems to be very important here. Why would one trust a consultant or a design service company with one's IP? Because of a legally-binding contract and because of reputation / past interaction? That probably plays a big part. Some strategies we came up with: If users don't trust us with their most important IP, we'll ask for their not-so-important IP. A support person probably has to meet the customer on a day-to-day basis, which would somewhat defeat the purpose of a webapp, at first. Yes, we would be selling computing power in a sense. But we're also trying to do more to simplify working with FPGAs. It's true that cost of parts is very important; that's why we're working on reporting chip cost and availability too. Octopart is very helpful in that respect! Thanks for your comments! |