An Interesting Piece on Value Propositions from ITSMA
Whilst carrying out some research recently I realised that I need to arrive at a more granular categorisation of the types or categories of value propositions that vendors use.
And in attempting to do that I stumbled across an interesting read on the ITSMA site entitled Why You Need Three Different Types of Value Propositions. I hadn’t heard of ITSMA before but it appears that they focus on helping high-tech organisations to market solutions and services. I’ll certainly track them from here on in because I felt that I could have written the blog entry myself as it matches my own personal experience very accurately.
The three types of value proposition that the author refers to are in… Continue reading
Cloud Computing – Where does one Capability Start and the Other end?
OK so having arrived at the first cut of a segmentation model for the Cloud Computing market, I am now embarking on a series of Reverse Engineered Positioning and Messaging Analysis (REPAMA) studies.
The problem I now face though as I start tp look in detail at various cloud vendors’ marketing propositions is that their products, capabilities and value propositions all appear to blur into one.
I guess this is a symptom of the early market nature of Cloud Computing. I would expect that as the market develops, real prospects will make real decisions based upon their real needs, and real differences will be stressed and perceived between the products and services of different vendors/service providers.
But right… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, cloud computing, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning | 
Appistry, cloud computing, competition, Danny Goodall, differentiation, early market, Lustratus, marketing, portfolio, REPAMA, strategy | 
Leave a commentVeniders – A Homage to Lewis Carroll…
…and his portmanteau words. I can’t help thinking as I write about this brave new world of Cloud Computing that we might need a new one.
Through years of thinking about and writing on the subject of technology marketing, I instinctively refer to the party that sells something to the buying party as “The Vendor”. The problem that Cloud Computing has introduced though is that the selling party in Cloud Computing may not be actually be selling a thing, but rather may simply be providing access to a service.
So whilst there is selling of a sort going on here, if I were to refer to say Amazon as a cloud “vendor” it wouldn’t be strictly accurate. The good… Continue reading
Updated Lustratus REPAMA Guide
Just a quick note to say that I’ve updated the Lustratus REPAMA Guide to version 1.1. I’ve added three more studies that have been part of our analysis for some time but hadn’t quite found their way into the guide.
These are:
- Depositioning focus
- Differentiation strategy
- Perceived threat
All of these studies are concerned with interpreting how the vendors under scrutiny approach competitive differentiation in one way or another and are now explained in the guide.
The Lustratus REPAMA guide is available for download, and for the first time in HTML format. Click here for more information.
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Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, positioning, product management, research | Competition and Competitive Intelligence, competitive, Danny Goodall, Lustratus, marketing strategy, product marketing, REPAMA, research, Strategic Marketing | Leave a commentThe Psychology of Decision Making
Carrying on from my blog on “corporate shyness”, I’m looking here at the different ways we evaluate information and make decisions. The first thing to say is that this is a big subject and one that others are much better qualified to cover than I am. Myers-Briggs has led much of the work on personality types and if you’re looking for in depth information that is not a bad place to start. But I am going to look at how personality traits influence the way we make decisions and what impact that might have on a marketing strategy aimed at influencing people.
Intuition
People who rely on intuition to make decisions typically believe that they see the whole… Continue reading
We’ve moved
Lustratus’ REPAMA consulting business has moved house. Well strictly speaking we’re still at the “Can’t remember where we put the ironing board and has anyone seen the cat?” stage of the move. But we’ve taken the first step by moving the repama.typepad.com blog to it’s shiny new location at www.lustratusrepama.com. So whilst it’ll be a while before we fling open the doors and invite the neighbours around for drinks, we’ve at least got somewhere to sleep tonight.
The problem was that the Lustratus REPAMA proposition had outgrown it’s home at www.lustratus.com which was always designed to be a place for end users and other interested parties to read and download Lustratus’ published research on infrastructure software issues. … Continue reading
Different differentiation for diffidents? (Corporate Shyness)
I hope you like the alliterative heading for the blog which was born from some work I’ve been doing recently for a client. I’m not sure that diffident is exactly the right word but there was no way that I was going to ditch it when it looks so beautiful set against all those “diff” words.
Anyway, I was struck recently by the reluctance of some people to fully embrace the concept and importance of aggressive differentiation. Whilst I’ve long understood that different types of people reach decisions about products (and lots of other things too) in different ways based on our bias towards one of the following psychological functions (Intuition, thinking, feeling and sensing), I’ve seldom before… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product marketing, usp, Vendor-Related Posts | competition, competitive, Competitive Marketing, competitor, Danny Goodall, differentiation, Lustratus, marketing strategy, oracle, product marketing, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing | 1 CommentUpdated High Performance Messaging Report
Just a quick note to say that the updated High Performance Messaging REPAMA Segment Analysis Study has been uploaded to the Lustratus site. It now contains the reverse-engineered product marketing strategy for TIBCO’s Messaging Appliance P-7500. Existing customers and Lustratus research subscription holders will already have been contacted with details of free upgrades.
Following on from the blog entry I made when the first version of the report was released I thought I’d show the updated value proposition below. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry TIBCO’s primary competitive focus is very unusual – it is TIBCO Rendezvous – one of its own products. The different approach to the market doesn’t stop there as you’ll… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, go-to-market, high performance middleware, marketing, positioning, product category, product management, product marketing, Vendor-Related Posts | 29West, competition, competitive, Danny Goodall, ibm, Lustratus, Messaging Appliance, middleware, product marketing, REPAMA, solace systems, Strategic Marketing, tibco | Leave a commentStandards-based marketing – an antidote “Be holier than thou” Part 6
So closing out this series of posts looking at differentiation in markets where technical standards have caused little technical difference between products, I’m going to look at standards bodies and technical education as a technique to create differentiation.
Preach the gospel – Educate
The first point to make is that in my experience products that have developed through the process of ratification of technical standards, first find an audience amongst the technical community. This means that there is an opportunity, albeit with a finite window of opportunity, to become the first vendor to provide education together with access to evaluation software for these early technical evaluators.
I’ve had first hand experience of this early stage marketing exercise. We… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, positioning, product marketing | competition, competitive, Danny Goodall, Lustratus, marketing, marketing strategy, messaging, positioning, product marketing, REPAMA, standards, standards bodies | Leave a commentStandards-based marketing – an antidote “Partner” Part 5
I’m carrying on this series of posts on how vendors can differentiate themselves in the market when technical standards have had the effect of removing significant functional difference between competitive products.
This time I’m going to look at partnering to create differentiation in your offer. Whilst the product proposition will remain materially similar to that of the standards-driven competition, a proposition carved from the synergies of the product and a strategic partner can be beneficial.
Partnering – Other complimentary vendors
As I suggested in this post, broadening the product portfolio is one way to create differentiation. Whilst this can be done through internal product development, it is also possible to broaden the product proposition through strategic partnerships.… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, positioning, product marketing | competition, competitive, Danny Goodall, Lustratus, marketing, messaging, Partner, Partnering, positioning, product marketing, REPAMA, standards, Strategic Marketing | 1 Comment
- On Informatica, Evangelism, Audience Strata and BIG-DATA
- The marketing strategies of open source versus closed source ESBs
- Part 2 – First output from REPAMATron – WSO2 versus FuseSource versus Talend versus the ESB market
- First output from REPAMATron – WSO2 versus FuseSource versus Talend versus the ESB market
- WSO2 – Fits in between Talend and FuseSource…
- WSO2, or rather one of its competitors, has thrown its hat into the ring
- Wordcount.org – it counts words…
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.