VMWare announced its enterprise social network platform, SocialCast, is now free for up to 50 users. VMWare acquired SocialCast last summer as a component of its larger strategy to drive modernization in enterprise collaboration. VMWare may still be working toward  the grand strategy, but in the interim the company has to deal with increasing competition within the enterprise social space.

VMWare’s price drop for SocialCast is clearly an effort to draw attention for the platform that must compete with giants like Oracle and Salesforce, smaller pure play vendors like Jive, Yammer and Telligent as well as a growing number of social features embedded within other tools (e.g. social CRM, social CMS, etc.). SocialCast previously attempted to allow potential customers to try the software with limited function, but Chuck Dietrich, VP Apps in the social software division of VMware said,

“Partly because of our acquisition by VMware, and our vision of how important enterprise social is going to be, we’ve decided to take a much more aggressive approach. We don’t want to limit adoption or create a subpar user experience. Organizations experimenting with social media need to get the full experience of social collaboration, with enough administrative control to enforce security and confidentiality rules and without having to worry about a time limit.”

VMWare isn’t the first vendor to offer a free version of its social software. However, unlike other major vendors, SocialCast is not disabling software features for free users. It is also not a time-limited trial. As long as there are less than fifty users, companies can use SocialCast indefinitely. Offering SocialCast free is an sales and marketing strategy designed to build buzz about the product and hopefully attract larger, paying customers. The model is not unproven. Google used the same approach to build its Google Apps’ business.

Paying SocialCast customers can choose from software-as-a-service (SaaS), private cloud or on-premises deployments. Additional details about the new, free edition of SocialCast are provided in a FAQ on the company’s product site. Pricing for the SaaS version begins at $5 per user month for a minimum of 100 users and an annual contract is required. We will be watching to see if offering SocialCast free will be enough to help the platform gain market traction.