Author Archives: admin

Sinking Satyam

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I recently gave a talk at the Software Licensing and Marketing (SLAM) conference where I painted a dower and gloomy picture for technology marketing this and next year. Seems I may have been overly optimistic. Though not yet officially proclaimed, we are in a recession. If my wet cocktail napkin math is any good, we will in this recession for quite some time — well into next year. Oddly though, in the earliest quarters of this recession some multi-national tech companies (Oracle, IBM, etc.) reported amazingly good sales growth. And this will be a short lived phenomenon as the recession spreads. Dig into their numbers. For example, IBM recently reported an 11% sales growth. But if you subtract the effects of the falling U.S. dollar, IBM’s sales grew a mere 4%. Granted, any real growth in the early part of a recession is a Good Thingâ„¢. But for an industry … Continue reading →

Collaboration Opportunity

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For varied and unrelated reasons, I have been involved with many firms either in the collaboration field (VA Software cum CollabNet, Open-Xchange, Novell and their GroupWise offering) or for whom collaboration is an essential part of the product (Mobile Compete). This accumulated history led to me being the Collaboration Solutions judge for this year’s CODiE award. When it comes to collaboration most vendors don’t get it. Collaboration is not about technology, it is about people. Specifically it is about people sharing information in a manner that achieves one of several possible goals: Reduce miscommunication Ensure the appropriate information is available for making good decisions Reduce the time to acquire that important information So, the “it” that vendors don’t “get” is the multipart question of collaboration, those parts being: Who needs to collaborate What kind of information do they need to share How do they prefer to share it Let’s take … Continue reading →

Oracle Roars

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You have to give Larry Ellison credit. When he makes up his mind to do something, he’ll take on the biggest and the baddest in order to win. He faced down the Federal government when he acquired most of the competitors in the ERP market in one massive gulp. And he swallowed them with very little apparent corporate indigestion. Now Larry has set his sight on the king of SaaS and arguably of CRM, pointing both barrels on SalesForce.com. Given my first encounter with SalesForce tech support this morning, I find myself on the verge of urging Ellison on. Aside from being a hosted offering based upon the bones of Seibel CRM, there is little newsworthy about the product itself except for the integration of some social media flavored features. For example, any object in the data (a contact’s name for example) can have a “sticky note” slapped on it, … Continue reading →

Marcom Meticulosity

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I feel a lecture coming on! I’m a bit anal retentive when it comes to marketing communications. This trait is constantly reinforced when I work with technology companies. As a species, they are the worst marcom machines on the face of Gawd’s gray world. So today I deviate from discussions of markets and strategy to communicate about communications. Specifically I’m going to give away some expertise about how to compose marketing prose. Rule #1 – don’t alliterate: It is really annoying. Rule #2 – know your audience: It is one thing to understand your audience, but another thing entirely to know them. “Knowing” means you are in their shoes, doing their job, and feeling their pain. It involves a deep connection that reveals their true motivations. For example, an IT executive might say he wants to reduce application development costs, but his true motivation is to spend that money on … Continue reading →

Flashback

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An alleged friend of mine reminded me of the TRS-80, the first computer I ever owned outright. He mentioned that old machine while I was talking to him on my cell phone. So I decided to look-up the specifications of the TRS-80 and my cell phone, and show how much computing technology has changed in 30 years.   TRS-80 HTC 8925 Delta Processor 1.7 Mhz 400 Mhz 5882% Memory 4 KB 125 MB 3125000% Video Rez 128 x 48 240 x 320 1250% Footprint 16" x 8" 4.4" x 2.3" 8% Price (1978 dollars) $599 $162 27% Datacom None GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB Now imagine where we will be in 2038.

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Service Marketing

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“Sometimes you have to get their attention first,” said the old farmer, who had just whacked his mule in the forehead with a two-by-four. The mule, a little stunned, nonetheless quit being ornery and started pulling the plow. Perhaps Dell has some mule blood in it. Dell is discovering what green marketeers discover in about their forth year of their careers — namely that service is a product. Like all products, quality and suitability to the needs of the customers determines success. Given that technology is complex and that no technology user can last long without support, it becomes a critical differentiator for long-term financial success. (A snide aside: If you want a glaringly good example of lousy customer service, just talk to anyone that uses web hosting from 1and1.com, a company that routinely explores the depths of customer disregard. The horror stories about 1and1.com technical support would make Steven … Continue reading →

Micro-hoo?

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In the all business, and especially in technology, there are three ways to grow: you can innovate product, you can change the rules of the game (marketing), or you can buy your way up (cash). When I see a hyper-competitive company like Microsoft making a multi-billion dollar plays to buy their way up a market, then I know they failed to innovate or market. And that is the condition in which we find Balmer and Company with their mega bid for Yahoo. We’ll call the merged company-to-be Micro-hoo? Microsoft — despite making the Internet a consumer product by bolting a TCP/IP stack into Windows long ago — was slow to see that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy was right when he said “The network is the computer.” The Internet is the only infrastructure bigger than what Microsoft had already created. As such it is a glorious place to make some … Continue reading →