Marketing Memos

Bar fights are as nasty as they are predictable.  I won’t discuss the
carnage aspect, leaving it to say that in my youth I saw a few and escaped the
raging insanity with my skin in tact and a whiskey in hand.

Bar fights are as predictable as a politicians broken promise. They typically
start with a slowly heating argument, originating from something as inane as
baseball statistics or an inebriated glance at the wrong woman.  Words get
louder and more personal, with the parties escalating bravado to save face and
intimidate rivals.  When one party reaches a certain level of anger, they
drop their voice a couple of octaves, and utter a poorly masked threat. 
Inevitably the challenged party will do something stupid, like stick their chin
out another inch, and the fight begins.

Such is the dance between Open Source, Microsoft, and SAMBA.  Microsoft
has made the threat, and SAMBA is the Open Source chin target practice for
Microsoft’s right-hook legal team.

The Open Source community released the third version of the GNU General
Public License ( GPLv3 ).  Development of GPLv3 was delayed as the community
responded to the Microsoft/Novell deal, fearing how Microsoft might co-opt Open
Source and seeing an opportunity to kick Steve Ballmer in the economic crotch. 

When Microsoft and Novell consummated their relationship, many feared that
Microsoft would use the arrangement to stifle Open Source.  The theory was
that Microsoft would use their alleged patent claims against one or more Open
Source packages to ensure that Open Source distributors entered into licensing
agreements and thus would pay a "Microsoft tax" for Open Source software.

"To prevent this, the GPL assures that patents cannot be used to render the
program non-free," according to the GNU web site. GPLv3 tosses a wrench into Microsoft supposed plans by removing the right to distribute a GPLv3-based package if it is tied to a patent, or forces the
distributor to turn the patent into an open license ( i.e., give up the right to
profit from the patent ).  So, if Microsoft passes along a Novell Linux
distribution that contains a GPLv3-based package, and Microsoft claims they have
patents that covers some or all of that technology, they surrender their patent
rights over that piece of software.

In other words, the Open Source community just told Microsoft to stick it.

Microsoft just spoke in a deep baritone and clinched their legal fist. In response to GPLv3 Microsoft growled "At this point in time, in order to
avoid any doubt or legal debate on this issue, Microsoft has decided that the
Novell support certificates that we distribute to customers will not
entitle the recipient to receive from Novell, or any other party,
any subscription for support and updates relating to any code licensed under
GPLv3," ( emphasis mine ) It is a narrow threat, saying that their paper
certificates are immune from GPLv3.  But the subtlety is they intend to
apply this edict to Novell and any other party.  This is a corporate
version of the poorly masked threat in a bar fight.  Microsoft is preparing
to throw the first punch in the great 21st Century GPL Barroom Brawl.

And SAMBA developers are saying "Go ahead.  Take a poke."

For those who slept through the last 10 years, SAMBA provides a variety of
file and print services, allowing PC users to share storage and printers across
a network.  This includes some reversed engineered ( or "revenged" ) mimicry
of Microsoft file and print services.  Businesses can toss a Linux server
into a remote office and for a fraction of the cost of using a Microsoft
operating system let Windows-based PCs share disc space and attached printers. 
I have even interviewed some firms that put Linux/SAMBA in mainframe partitions
to server their entire enterprises from a single box.  SAMBA and Linux
pretty much stalled aggressive growth of Windows in the file and print server
market.

And that has annoyed Microsoft greatly.  So when the SAMBA crew decided to adopt GPLv3, they threaten the patent claims
Microsoft might have in their file and print technologies.  GPLv3 would in
effect force Microsoft ( and possibly Novell ) to either not distribute SAMBA as
part of a Linux distribution ( which is unthinkable as it is considered an
intrinsic package and in high demand ) or release their patent claims that cover
SAMBA.

Barstools are toppled, the drunks are on their feet, and one has called the
other’s bluff.  Now we’ll see if Microsoft breaks it’s legal beer bottle
over SAMBA’s head, or walks out of the bar to get a breath of fresh air. 
Me, I’m expecting a bar fight and will take wagers on the winner.

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You would think that application developers, or at least their bosses, would
be gonzo over prototyping.  Every survey of IT indicates that getting
application requirement right and delivering the correct functionality to end
users is the most traumatic, dysfunctional, and catastrophically error prone
aspect in authoring apps.  CIOs could save a great deal of verbal and
physical abuse if they just got their teams to get the requirements right the
first time.

(Yes I realize IT professionals lay blame on end users not actually knowing
what time zone they are in, much less what they want in application
functionality.  But end users have the same perception of programmers. 
This was nicely summarized in "Gavin’s Law of Bidirectional Software
Imbecility.":  "If you’re a developer then the users look like idiots. If
you’re a user then the developers look like idiots." )

In a recent client engagement, we evaluated multiple markets including the
application prototyping market.  I was frankly surprised at the state of
the market, which even Forrester believes is a new but growing niche, at least
for "high fidelity" prototyping tools.  There are few players in the space,
and fewer still that can create application prototypes that are sufficiently
robust, can provide simulations from real data, can perform remote
demonstrations, and can do it in anything but HTML.

In short, this market appears to have to be under served at present. 
There are few competitors, most are targeting the visionary and early adopters,
and charging relatively obscene prices because of their targets.  This
means that the market is still pre-chasm, and otherwise might be approaching a
mass market shift.

But the shift will not occur soon given the state of IT’s alleged mindset and
the current price points of competing products.  The rigors of requirement
gathering range from sloppy to anal retentive, and the relative value of
prototyping has little clear ROI.  Indeed, most analyst that have looked at
prototyping conclude that the ROI for prototyping comes from eliminating
mistakes and subsequent reworking of applications, which is a tough sell as it
first requires getting IT professionals to admit that their current system of
requirements gathering is incomplete or broken.  One of the prototyping
vendors recognized this point, stating publicly "we are so confident about the
ROI of XXX that we will license the product based on savings you realize …"

Educating the market is the strategic challenge that faces most pre-chasm
companies.  In the case of the prototyping market, the situation is a bit
worse because:

• People will not buy unless there exists in their mind a perceived need. 
• People will not have a perceived need if they believe they are doing
  their jobs well. 
• Telling people that they are not doing their jobs properly ticks them
  off.

Selling the benefits is an obvious alternative, but tricky in this market. 
The benefits (faster time to application delivery, less IT expense through less
rework, etc.) are damn near impossible to quantify in the abstract, and are
highly variable from customer to customer.  So the benefits may need to be
expressed in more abstract terms to create the perception of need, and as with
many pre-chasm markets, fear is the operative tool.  In particular
pre-chasm education campaigns are often based in the fear of becoming less
competitive or generating the wrath of the CEO ( given the high turn-over rate
for CIOs, this last one is effective when selling to the corner IT office ).

Expect a few things to happen in this market in relatively short order:

• One or more of the competitors will initiate a media-based education
  campaign to drive the competitive value of prototyping.  This will
  happen when early adopter sales begin to slacken.
• Expect the one low-cost competitor in the market to piggyback on the
  educational campaign, and drive mass adoption.
• Pricing for the high-end competitors will start to drop when the market
  begins adopting prototyping on a larger scale, given that the low-cost entry
  will be seriously evaluated (their feature matrix is competitive).
• Expect one dark horse (our client) to co-opt this campaign with a niche
  play and an unexpected feature/benefit that bridges prototyping with
  application deployment.

Even if you are not in this market, do watch.  It will be entertaining.

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