I’ve created a monster… REPAMATron – A Search Engine for Competitive Marketing Intelligence?
…Well strictly speaking that should be I’m creating a monster. You see, I’m in the process of automating our REPAMA methodology. Let me explain.
I’ve been using the REPAMA competitive research methodology for many years to understand vendors’ marketing strategies. Long before the formation of Lustratus in fact. It wasn’t a strict methodology back then. It was a set of relatively loose processes, measures and classifications that I used to ‘score’ various elements of a specific software vendor’s marketing strategy.
I used the process when I worked on the vendor side in various senior marketing positions. It allowed me to understand how I could differentiate my company’s technology from our competitors. And to differentiate, first I had to know how… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, pain, REPAMATron | 
analysis, automated, competition, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, competitive, Lustratus REPAMA, marketing intelligence, nlp, REPAMA, REPAMATron, search engine | 
6 CommentsTalend acquires Sopera – Does the World Need “Suck-it-and-see” Global Middleware?
I had a chat with an ex-colleague yesterday who told me that Talend had acquired Germany-based open source SOA platform ‘vendor’ Sopera.
This move came on the back of the news that the company had completed a $34M round of funding and Talend seems to be aiming very high with it’s combined proposition. In the accompanying press release, which is refreshingly bullish and direct, the company is aiming at vendors such as TIBCO, Software AG and Progress Software; describing those vendors’ solutions as ‘proprietary’.
Whilst it will be very interesting to see how Talend embeds the acquired technology into its own offering, it will be even more interesting to see how Talend will massage it’s go-to-market model in the… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, esb, SOA and Integration, Vendor-Related Posts | acquisition, competitive, deutsche post, fuse, fusesource, integration, MITICOR, open source, PIPESCOM, progress software, software ag, sopera, talend, tibco | 1 CommentTruth Denied?
Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery – or something like that. Anyway I’m sure Blake Dournaee of Intel will forgive me for borrowing the title for this blog…
…from his own “Truth Denied” blog entry on his Truth in SOA blog. Follow the link and you’ll see that Blake is a little aggrieved at a previous blog entry of mine where I suggested that Intel was using spin when describing something as both an appliance and software.
Now I’m also a little aggrieved because in his post Blake seems to suggest that he attempted to wield the sword of truth by posting a clarifying comment on this site but, he claims that his comment… Continue reading
Appistry and 3Tera Under the REPAMA Microscope
I’ve just uploaded the first draft of my latest Cloud Computing REPAMA Segment Analysis Study.
This time I’ve looked at a couple of vendors in the Cloud Software / Cloud Management / Application Services Management segment (using the Lustratus REPAMA Cloud Computing market taxonomy / segmentation model). Specifically I’ve reverse-engineered the key go-to-market strategies of 3Tera and Appistry. I will add another couple of vendors to the study as time goes on but for the moment I thought these would be two good candidates to start with. They are very different companies with very different product approaches to solving similar, if not quite the same problems. I wanted to spend a little time here highliting some… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, marketing, positioning | 3Tera AppLogic, Appistry, applications services management, cloudiq, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, differentiation, positioning, positioning statement, REPAMA, segment analysis study, value proposition | Leave a commentCompetitive Differentiation in Cloud Computing – “The horse-less carriage and typing pools”
I had a meeting with a prospective client earlier in the week and we were chatting about how differentiation and positioning in Cloud Computing has to mature.
The contention was that cloud computing vendors and service providers today are too inwardly-focussed and that they should look at the external market to determine their competitive marketing strategies. Cloud Computing differentiation bears all the hallmarks of early market strategy and is very limited. It got me thinking. Imagine if competitive differentiation was carried out in other walks of life the way it is currently carried out by most Cloud Computing vendors and service providers.
Imagine if Porsche for example had spent 7 years perfecting its new sports car, a car that was… 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 commentDifferent 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 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 CommentStandards-based marketing – an antidote “Broaden the Debate” Part 4
Part 4 – Broaden the Debate
I’m continuing this series of blogs here by looking at the techniques that software vendors can use to create the “illusion” of differentiation in markets where technical standards have led to little material product difference.
So moving on from my last blog where I looked at the way an organisation can differentiate based on the way that they sell, this entry will look at techniques to move the focus away from the technology and onto some other element of the proposition where real differentiation between vendors exists.
I should perhaps first acknowledge that achieving this sort of holistic approach to taking a proposition to market is not the work of moments. It takes… 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, differentiation, Lustratus, marketing strategy, product marketing, REPAMA, standards, Strategic Marketing | Leave a 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.