A few months ago, I wrote a post about a St. Louis start-up called Health InfoSTAT because they adopted a software plus services approach to developing their inaugural product offering, Solace. Basically, Solace is a personal health record management application that allows you to create and maintain profiles for you and members of your family. Downloading and using the client software is free and, for a fee of about $20 a year, you can publish your information securely to Health InfoSTAT's hosted services and make the information available to medical professionals whenever it is needed.

I thought their story was different because their business model evolved around their architectural model of software plus services. That is, they are creating several free client applications available for multiple platforms and devices, most of which are fully functional and stand-alone. Then, for an annual fee, customers can then subscribe to Health InfoSTAT's hosted services and significantly extend the functionality of the client software.

Anyway, Microsoft decided to do a case study on Health InfoSTAT and published it earlier this week. If you've been intrigued by the concept of software plus services but have struggled with the business value proposition, I highly suggest you give it a read.