When is a download a download?
My manager pointed out a really interesting article on how companies report the number of downloads of their products. There's little consistency and certainly not any type of industry standard. I know in the past we used attempted download numbers, which are definitely not the same as (and higher than) completed. However, over the past five years or so we've really focused on our ability to report on completed downloads and report on them accurately. We've created an easy-to-use completed download report that anyone inside Sun can run. It's our intent that product and marketing teams use the completed download numbers whenever they make public proclamations, and when asked, of course we tell them that is the most accurate metric!
The same article makes mention that downloading is also not a guarantee that the customer is using the software and that companies seldom track who actually installs their software. Interestingly enough, I'm leading a project right now to get back such information with regards to Java installations. (It's a big project on a tight time frame -- that's why I haven't blogged much lately!) We have to be very careful however. Sending data back from the client to Sun touches on many sensitive privacy and spyware issues, and we have no desire to cross that line. We are adding language to our license agreement to inform customers when we collect data and will add more specific notification as soon as we can engineer in the solution. We're also not sending back any personally identifiable information -- just aggregate data to help us understand, for example, what percentage of people who download software go on to install it. Then we can provide really accurate install and usage stats that are solidly grounded in reality.
OK, back to the subject of when is a download a download! Specifically, I wanted to point out an interesting case at Sun in regards to announcements about volume statistics for the Solaris 10 Operating System. Note most of these announcements refer to "licenses," not "downloads," though the two are often used together, such as "4 million licenses have been distributed (or downloaded)..." This is an honest statement of fact, but in the spirit of this subject, let me say this does not mean 4 million individual product downloads. When you go to download Solaris 10, you will be asked to take a "survey" before you can download. The first survey question is, "List the total number of systems for which you are requesting Solaris licenses". A user might wish to deploy the single Solaris download on 10 systems, so enters 10. Thus one download = 10 licenses, and so on.
Occasionally someone might slip up and talk about the number of licenses as synonymous with number of downloads. I assure you the Download Center team will explain the difference and ask them to be more precise in the future. It is our desire that when you hear stats from Sun, a download really is a download.
