Corporate DNA @ Progress Software – Redux
Its déjà vu all over again. It was just under a year ago that I wrote about a massive restructuring at Progress Software, and here am I about to do the same again. But in the words of the song, this time I know it’s for real.
Progress appears to have finally thrown in the towel in a number of the market segments that it competes in. From the press release that accompanied the announcement, it is clear that some deep corporate soul searching has gone on over the past several months and that somebody finally had the balls to introspect and ask “What is Progress Software good at?”. Having the corporate balls to ask the question… Continue reading
Heroku Versus AppEngine and Amazon EC2 – Where Does it fit in?
I’ve just had a really pleasant experience looking at Heroku – the ‘cloud application platform’ from Salesforce.com but it’s left me wondering where it fits in.
A mate of mine who works for Salesforce.com suggested I look at Heroku after I told him that I’d had some good and bad experiences with Google’s AppEngine and Amazon’s EC2. I’d been looking for somewhere to host some Python code that I’d written in my spare time and I had looked at both AppEngine and EC2 and found pros and cons with both of them.
As it turns out it was a good suggestion because Heroku’s approach is very good for the spare-time developer like me. That’s not to say that it’s… Continue reading
…We didn’t have an ice cream…
I’m doing the first phase research for the REPAMA study into cloud computing and I’m spending my time wading through lots of communication from many small, start-up companies.
And in doing so I was reminded of the ‘parable’ about the child and the ice cream…you know the story. It goes something like this.
A mother and her six year old daughter are out shopping and as a treat for her well-behaved daughter, the mother buys her an ice cream. But the mother is worried that her daughter’s elder brother, who is at home, will be jealous that his sister got an ice cream but he didn’t.
So the mother says…
When we get home, don’t tell your brother that we… Continue reading
On Informatica, Evangelism, Audience Strata and BIG-DATA
I attended an event the other week in London organised by Informatica entitled The Enterprise Data Management Forum.
I thoroughly enjoyed the event – except that it overran and I had to miss the Q&A panel to run and get a flight. That aside, it’s really gratifying to watch a large-ish vendor execute on marketing strategy with a single vision. I’ve long admired Informatica’s marketing, having worked alongside a couple of their ex-senior marketing folks and seen the disciplines they learned at Informatica. And it’s clear that the company is focussed, knows who it sells to and why they buy.
But I thought I’d share a couple of observations that reminded me that the Informatica marketing machine is not… Continue reading
The marketing strategies of open source versus closed source ESBs
I’m continuing my series of blog entries where I am sharing some early results from REPAMATron – my automated competitive marketing intelligence gathering tool. In this entry I’m looking at the difference in marketing strategy between open source and closed source enterprise service buses (EBSs).
REPAMATron automates my REPAMA competitive marketing intelligence methodology and is currently in Alpha. I’m using the ESB market, a market I know well, to help to tune the algorithms at the heart of REPAMATron.
In my previous entry I looked at 3 Enterprise Service Bus vendors’ marketing strategies (WSO2, Talend and FuseSource) and compared them to the computed market mean. I’ve now added another 6 ESB vendors to the study from the long list… Continue reading
Part 2 – First output from REPAMATron – WSO2 versus FuseSource versus Talend versus the ESB market
In the previous post I shared some of the early results from REPAMATron – the technology I’ve developed that automates the process of gathering competitive marketing intelligence.
The previous post described what REPAMA and REPAMATron are all about so if you’ve landed here and have no idea what this is, then I’d recommend that you read the first post in this series. Having taken a look at how a section of the Enterprise Service Bus market (WSO2, FuseSource and Talend) communicates benefits or value propositions, I’m now going to share the research into the product features that each vendor communicates most prominently. To allow a comparison to be made between the vendors and to the market mean… Continue reading
First output from REPAMATron – WSO2 versus FuseSource versus Talend versus the ESB market
If you’ve been following this blog you’ll know that I analyse the marketing tactics and strategies of high-tech vendors – mainly in the infrastructure software space. It’s…
…an emotional day for me as I share the first output from my automated competitive marketing intelligence gathering system – REPAMATron. Well perhaps it’s not that emotional, but it certainly represents a significant milestone in a project that has been in development in my ‘spare time’ for a little while now. Below you’ll find my first tentative steps at automated analysis of the Enterprise Service Bus market.
REPAMA is a research methodology that allows me to categorise and compare the marketing strategies of high-tech vendors inferred from the language they use to… Continue reading
Wordcount.org – it counts words…
…or rather it lists English words in order of how frequently they appear on the Internet
EDIT: Here’s a link to the Arcanicity Index Calculator I mention lower down in this post.
I stumbled across this site the other day when looking for information on the frequency of words used in common English. The site is the brainchild of Jonathan Harris and is wonderfully minimalistic. It almost feels as though this simple Flash plugin were an installation in a museum’s white room. A real lesson to us “more is more” types that indeed, less is more.
Anyway, take a look at wordcount.org and marvel at where your favourite words, your first name, your last name or your company name… Continue reading



Recent Comments
May 12, 2011 (12:01) The Goodall Technology Reading Ease Index - How Complex is Your Marketing Copy? Hmm. I really do like the name Sarah but what about my ego? If I were to call the index 'GoodRead...
May 12, 2011 (11:36) The Goodall Technology Reading Ease Index - How Complex is Your Marketing Copy? I suggest calling it the GoodRead Index. Maybe it's over-reaching a bit, but you'll just have to ...
October 14, 2010 (4:19) Truth Denied? The Software Appliance Revisited. I hope you could tell that I was being more than a little flippant here Jacques. Perhaps I should...
October 13, 2010 (1:56) Truth Denied? The Software Appliance Revisited. Allow me to disagrre. At a customer, we have used Datapower for years to process XML (BTW, it is ...
June 7, 2010 (4:38) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Pete,Thanks for your comments, and those of your colleague. I think Danny has answered the 'mar...
June 4, 2010 (4:03) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Hi,I'd very much like to develop a point made in the report where it is asserted that software ...
May 6, 2010 (12:35) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Thanks for your comment Blake. This is a marketing-focused blog that looks at different vendors' ...
May 5, 2010 (1:23) New Report From Lustratus Research: A Competitive Review of SOA Appliances Hello There - It seems that this is a very provocative report, especially with respect to the sta...
April 14, 2010 (2:57) The Decision Making Unit for Cloud Computing Nice Technology Related Blog. Will visit again.
October 16, 2009 (5:56) The Decision Making Unit for Cloud Computing Very interesting point of discussion. I would be very interested to hear your results.