lustratus REPAMA

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...falling in 2009. No great surprise there then as marketing budgets have been used by many struggling organisations as a “profit shock absorber” .

But what is of interest is what that reduced budget has meant to the shape of marketing organisations and their priorities. How are they actually allocating remaining budget in these tough times? What has this meant to marketing headcount? etc.

That is the focus of IDC’s Michael Gerard in his annual analysis of marketing spend. Some snippets of the study have been released publicly and I’ve listed some of these below:

• Large organisations’ marketing budgets have on average reduced by 8.3% and their headcount has reduced by 10%
• 6000 IT vendor marketing roles have been lost worldwide in 2009
• Lack of budget has forced process improvements and in particualar has meant closer collaboration with sales
• Broader, product portfolio marketing has been sacrificed to allow for more tactical themed campaigns.
• Sales enablement has become a focus

Michael makes some other general observations and recommendations in his blog which is well worth a read.

Danny Goodall

I’ve been a bit busy recently and so instead of finishing off the complex REPAMA SAS into the “Cloud Computing / Cloud Software / Cloud Management / Application Services Management” study, I decided to produce a rough draft of the much simpler REPAMA into Force.com’s go-to-market strategy instead.

Whilst the segment analysis study only covers Force.com at the moment, I will add additional vendors/providers into the study over the coming weeks. If you have any suggestions who I should compare to/with Force.com, let me know.

I’m quite pleased with the result. Not because of any specific talent on my part but rather as I’ve already said here, Force.com’s marketing is a case study in how to take a new, disruptive technology to market. They understand their audience, they know what problems they solve and they know why they’re better/different. They communicate in clear language and they repeat their positioning strategy again and again and again consistently in all of their out-bound marketing communications. They’ve had successes and they’ve been able to document this and use it as proof of the claims they make. It’s been a joy to reverse-engineer it. That’s not to say that I think it’s perfect – they do tend to mix their audience and messages (audience strata mismatch) but it is very good indeed.

As I’m working through the cloud computing market and helping some vendors with their go-to-market strategies I’ve decided to share this and some  future studies on here because as I said in my ironic blog mission statement all those months ago, I want to highlight best practice in marketing communications and product marketing through this blog. So I thought it would be useful to share what value propositions and messages a market leader is using to address their prospects.

Anyway, below is the positioning statement that I’ve reverse engineered for Force.com’s proposition to end-user organisations. (I don’t plan to tackle the ISV or SI propositions yet)

It’s a little woolly and raw at the moment but even in that state it’s clear that Force.com knows its market, its competition and its USPs. The REPAMA SAS containing just Force.com at the moment can be found online at  Slideshare.net and is embedded below.

If you’d like a copy of the slides let me know. For details of how to interpret the results of the REPAMA study please review the Lustratus REPAMA Guide.

Danny Goodall

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 now the general approach I see is that no matter which product or service of a particular vendor I’m looking at, the proposition to the prospect typically boils down to.

Cloud Computing is good

…and this fits for any product in the portfolio. I see…

Cloud Computing does this, Cloud Computing enables that,Cloud Computing reduces this and Cloud Computing increases that.

Fine. But there are a couple of problems with that.

Firstly, and somewhat obviously, if all vendors/service providers simply evangelise the category like this instead of focussing on what they specifically can do, there is zero differentiation. And with zero differentiation the business typically goes the way of ‘market leader’ or at least the vendor/provider with the greatest market reach.

Secondly, if I were a prospect and all I hear about is the generic capabilities and benefits of the cloud, how do I know what each of the different products in your portfolio could do for me? It might be good to talk to me in terms of what the individual products do, how they are each different from/superior to competitors’ products or alternative approaches, what tangible things each product changes for me and what I would be left with AFTER I’ve bought each product from you.

I should stress that there is another category of proposition developing in my analysis which says cloud is good BUT there are lots of problems and potential problems to address first.

This is an obvious proposition and one that vendors/providers in new paradigms like cloud quickly rally around. It goes something like this…

Cloud will do lots of great things for your organisation but you have to make sure you do it right or all sorts of bad things could happen…

The problem with this proposition is that there is an obvious implication.

…and if you don’t solve these things, you’ll lose your job.

This negative connotation and association with the potential failures of cloud initiatives are perhaps not the best way to attempt to mobilise prospects. Having said that, as the movement toward the cloud builds pace it will likely be this “proceed with caution” proposition that gains traction. As cloud becomes a given, so it will be the vendors/providers that can prove that they can quickly address the deficiencies inherent with current cloud strategies and mitigate the risks involved that will rise to the top.

Anyway these are some of my early findings that I thought I would share.

I’ve decided to first look at the Cloud Software / Cloud Management / Application Services Management category from the segmentation model. And I’ve decided to take a look at Appistry first – mainly because its a category that I’ve had direct experience of but also because in a market as broad and as complex as this one, well, you have to start somewhere.

I’ll keep you posted as I move forward.

Danny Goodall

I’ve completed the first draft of the cloud computing segmentation model upon which we will build our REPAMA studies.

As I’ve mentioned before along my journey to arrive at this model, I’ve found the cloud computing market to have quickly become crowded and confused. This is largely due to the ease at which “traditional” vendors have re-repositioned themselves to catch the cloud computing wave.

The other issue of course is that over time cloud computing will cease to be a new paradigm and will quickly become the way consumers and businesses avail themselves of computing services. So what I’m seeing here is a market in transition where just about every category in traditional software sales will have an offer in the cloud computing space until on-demand models becomes “the norm”.

So I guess it’s really not that surprising to see so many vendors present in the space. But at the same time it is very confusing for legitimate prospects to cut their way through the mass of terminology to then examine vendors and service providers who appear to have broadly identical capabilities and value propositions.  How do they decide the best way to take their first steps into cloud computing? It’ll be interesting to see what our REPAMA studies say about how each of the vendors/service providers’ takes their products to market.

Anyway, I’ve uploaded a set of slides to slideshare.net which I think is probably the best way to make the material available but if anyone wants a copy of the slides please let me know. The slides are embedded below.

As I’ve said before, this segmentation model will undoubtedly develop and change over time as I look in more detail at the marketing efforts of the various vendors involved. The definitions for each of the functional areas are a little woolly right now. But at least I now have a structure that allows me to decide which segments and vendors/service providers I will include in our studies moving forward.

I’d like to once again acknowledge the significant role that Brad Buck, Peter Laird and Christofer Hoff played in helping to form the ideas on market segmentation and the role NIST has played in crystallising definitions on cloud computing and software/platform/infrastructure as a service.

Danny Goodall

Products and vendors included in the segmentation model are shown below. If you represent a vendor below and I haven’t represented your organisation correctly, or if you represent a vendor that isn’t included but should be, please contact me and let me know a little bit about your company and your proposition and where you feel you fit in the segmentation model.

10Gen MongoDB, 3Tera App Logic, Aconex, Advologix, Altor Networks, Amazon EBS, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon SQS, Amitive, Apache CouchDB, Apache HBase, Appian Anywhere, Appistry, AppJet, AppNexus, AppZero, Aptana, Aria Systems, Aster DB, Beam4d, Beowulf, Blink Logic, Boomi, Box.net, Bungee Labs Connect, Caspio, Cassandra, Cast Iron, Clickability, Cloud42, Cloud9 Analytics, CloudFoundry, CloudStatus, ClusterSeven, CohesiveFT, CohesiveFT VPN Cubed, ColdLight Neuron, Collabnet, Concur, CrownPoint, CTERA, CTERA Portal, DataSynapse, Desktoptwo, DirectLaw, DocLanding, DropBox, Dynamsoft, Dynect, Elastichosts, Elastra, EMC Atmos, Engine Yard, Enomaly Enomalism, enStratus, Etelos, Eucalyptus, eVapt, FathomDB, Fios, Flexiscale, Force.com, Gemstore Gemfire, Gigaspaces, Globus Toolkit, gnip, Google App Engine, Google Apps, Google BigTable, GridLayer, Hadoop, Hosting.com CloudNine, HubSpan, Hyperic, Hypertable, IBM Lotus Live, iCIMS, InfoBright, Informatica iTRICITY, Joyent Accelerators, JungleDisk, K2 Analytics, Kaavo, Knowledge TreeLive, LayeredTech, LiveOps, LoadStorm, LogiXML, LongJump, LucidEra, memcached, Mercury, mezeo software, Microsoft BizTalk Services, Microsoft SDS, Mosso Cloud Files, Mosso Cloud Servers, Mosso Cloud Sites, Mozy, MS Azure Services Platform, MSDynamics, MuleSource Mule OnDemand, NetDocuments, NetSuite, NewRelic, Ning, Nirvanix, Oco, Open.ControlTier, OpenCloud, opencrowd, OpenNebula, OpenQRM, OpenRSM, OpSource, OpSource Connect, Oracle Coherence, Oracle On Demand, Panaroma, Parallels, ParaScale, Parature, PingIdentity, PivotLink, Platform, Qrimp, Quantivo, Questys, rackspacecloud, Redi2, Reductive Labs Puppet, Responsys, Rightnow, RightScale, Rollbase, rPath, Salesforce.com, Scalr, Sertifi, Serve Path GoGrid, SkyTap, SnapLogic, SnapLogic SaaS Solution Packs, SOASTA, SpringCM, Sterna, StreetSmarts, Success Metrics, Sun Grid Engine, Symplified, Syncplicity, Taleo, TerraCotta, Terremark, TIBCO Silver, Tokyo Cabinet, Trigence, Vertica, VMWare vSphere, Vordel, Workday, Workxpress, Xactly, Xero, Xeround, Xythos, Ylastic, Zembly, Zmanda, Zmanda Cloud Backup, Zoho, Zuora, Mezeo Software, Workxpress, Trigence, AppZero, Platform, OneNetwork, SpringSource, Vaultscape

Attempting to classify and compare the various vendors in the various technical segments of the cloud computing market is tough.

And if I’m honest I’m struggling with the shear volume of vendors that apparently have cloud propositions. I find it amazing that so many vendors/service providers have apparently architected and built specific solutions for this space.

But between you and me, I’m not sure that every vendor/service provider now positioned in the cloud computing market has been beavering away producing a specialised solution. Some I’m sure have done that but others have just changed a name or added an adjective or modifier to a product name.

But one thing is for sure, they’ve all changed their marketing!

As I’ve blogged before, the press release boilerplate (“the about…” text that appears at the end of a press release as guidance for editors) is an invaluable tool for marketing analysts such as myself. As evidence, it is the equivalent of the smoking gun or the size 11 muddy footprints left on the dining room carpet in a detective novel.

As vendors evolve so their boilerplate changes. If a vendor started with a good strategy that only needed minor tweaks over time to turn them into a very successful business, so the press release boilerplate is only tweaked in a minor way over time.  But when a vendor is forced to significantly change course due to a lack of traction or success during their history, the changes are faithfully recorded in the evolution of their bolierplate text.

So when the name Cordys popped up in Google this morning associated with cloud computing I took a double-take. I knew Cordys as an early ESB turned BPM/Orchestration vendor, formed by Jan Baan. I obviously missed their re-positioning so I wanted to do a little digging to find out how they made the leap from one to the other. So I fired up my press release, article and archive research tool and this is what I saw.

On January 12th 2009 Cordys was a business process specialist who apparently hadn’t heard of cloud or “as a service” which was faithfully reflected in its boilerplate.

Business process management specialists form strategic alliance – Cordys and Inex establish Cordys BPMS Centre of Excellence in the UK

About Cordys – 12th January 2009

Cordys is a global provider of software for business process innovation. The industry-leading Cordys Business Operations Platform (BOP) consists of a complete suite for next generation Business Process Management (BPMS), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and an open, integrated set of tools and technologies including Composite Application Framework (CAF), Master Data Management (MDM) and a SOA Grid. The Cordys platform empowers customers to dramatically improve the speed of change, fundamentally altering the way they innovate their Business Operations to achieve a true customer-centric philosophy. Global 2000 companies worldwide have selected Cordys to achieve business performance improvements such as increased productivity, reduced time to market, higher security and faster response to ever-changing market demands. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Cordys is a global company with offices in the USA, the UK, Germany, China, India and Israel.

But 8 days later that was all changed and the new positioning was reflected in its  boilerplate.

Cordys award winning Process Factory now available as community platform free of charge Web-based application development and BPM accessible to the Open Community.

About Cordys – January 20th 2009

Cordys is a global provider of software for business process innovation and Enterprise Cloud Orchestration. The industry-leading Cordys Business Operations Platform (BOP) consists of a complete suite for next generation Business Process Management (BPM), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and innovative SaaS Deployment Frameworks (SDF), delivering a complete Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution. It includes an open, integrated set of tools & technologies including Composite Application Framework (CAF), Master Data Management (MDM) and a SOA Grid. The Cordys platform and its cutting-edge Cloud technology empowers customers to dramatically improve the speed of change, fundamentally altering the way they innovate their Business Operations to achieve a true customer-centric philosophy. Global 2000 companies worldwide have selected Cordys to achieve business performance improvements such as increased productivity, reduced time to market, higher security and faster response to ever-changing market demands. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Cordys is a global company with offices in the USA, the UK, Germany, China, India and Israel.

Now I don’t want to seem to be picking on Cordys unduly as there are many other examples of companies that have re-positioned to catch this wave. I’ve advocated, supervised or instigated similar populist strategies myself in the past and doubtless will do again in the future. Yes, I’m sure that with a provenance as good as Cordys/Baan this must have been part of a much wider initiative involving new product development and long-term strategies. Yes, I know that SOA/Orchestration does have an obvious if somewhat tangential connection to the cloud paradigm. But there was no apparent evolution to cloud, no obvious chain of functionality that led them to become a cloud service provider which makes me a little suspicious.

The issue however is that because it is this easy to become a cloud computing vendor/service provider the market has quickly become incredibly crowded. Until the cloud market starts to take some tangible form that is based on customer need/demand and not just vendor whim and spin, then it is going to make selecting and choosing a cloud or *aaS offer very difficult for legitimate prospects.

So I’ll add Cordys into the ever-growing list of cloud computing vendors and file them under platform services/integration. And when I get round to tackling that section of the REPAMA study, we’ll see how Cordys’ offer stacks up.

Danny  Goodall

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.