A Comment on 10 Defining Points for Cloud Computing
I was reading Robin Bloor’s blog entry from earlier in the year recently where he makes some interesting points. But I’m not sure that I agree with all of them…
Robin attempts to identify some of the defining characteristics of cloud computing but I get the feeling that he is starting from a slightly cynical stand point. And whilst I agree that vendor and service provider marketing tactics have created a great deal of hype, I feel others must also share some of the blame for the confusion in the space.
Anyway, his 10 Defining Points for Cloud Computing blog entry is here. I tried to post a comment but as it appears that it’s still… 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 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 CommentOpen Source and the Impotence(sic) of Being Earnest
Q. What do the questions…
“How do porcupines make love?”
and
“How do you ‘sell’ open source software?”
…have in common?
A. The answer to both is “Carefully!”
Software sales is a funny business. Push too hard and you’re open to accusations of potentially ripping people off through aggressive tactics, don’t push hard enough and you end up having had many nice discussions (tea and biscuit meetings as they are known) with many nice people but your children go hungry. It’s a balance. And nowhere is this more in evidence than in the open source world.
I was chatting to an ex-colleague last week about the issues they have taking their open source software products to market.… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, Marketing Tactics, product marketing, prospects, Vendor-Related Posts | Apache, Danny Goodall, JBOSS, lead generation, marketing, marketing strategy, MuleSource, open source, Red Hat, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing | Leave a commentIs this slowdown real?
I don’t mean to be crass here and I know that I’ve asked this question before, but I have to wonder whether we are experiencing as deep a slowdown as the media would have us believe.
Perhaps it hasn’t reached my part of the software industry yet but right now I’m working with four companies who are all doing incredibly well. They’ve all had great years and are looking forward to a better year. I have to balance that by saying that I’ve also got contacts in my network who have been hit by some real problems – but most of them are really closely tied to the investment banking market.
But most surprising for… Continue reading
REPAMA Guide Now Online
Despite being available in “beta” form to REPAMA users for some time, I finally got round to packaging up a publicly downloadable version of the Lustratus REPAMA Guide. This can be downloaded from Lustratus.com for no charge.
I should say a big thank you to clients, colleagues and everyone else who has provided feedback on the guide, which studies should be included and how they should be presented.
So “Thank you”!
And for those looking to understand the product marketing and go-to-market strategies of TIBCO’s competitors in the High Performance Messaging space – specifically Solace Systems’ Content Router, 29West’s LBM and IBM’s WebSphere MQ LLM – I’ve also put the High Performance Messaging REPAMA Segment Analysis Study in… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, go-to-market, high performance middleware, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product management, product marketing, Vendor-Related Posts | 29West, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, competitive, Content Router, Danny Goodall, go-to-market, ibm, LBM, LLM, low latency messaging, Lustratus, marketing, marketing strategy, middleware, REPAMA, solace systems, strategy, tibco | Leave a commentWhat Slowdown?
I was discussing the economic slowdown with some friends over the weekend. We were trying to predict the likely depth, length and impact but we came to the conclusion that logic and a sound understanding of economics alone couldn’t help. You’d need to apply complex chaos psychology first. The issue, we realised, is that whilst people anxiously focus on the harsher trading conditions, we’re not focusing on the positives – the things that will bring us out the other side.
I’m not going to suggest that all we need to do is shut our eyes and wish it away but if we stop anxiously focusing on the negatives, we can turn a bad situation into a better… Continue reading
Focus and 8 fingered gloves
I remember using the phrase “You’re marketing 8 fingered gloves” with a client a few years ago. And without wanting to show any disrespect to those unfortunate or fortunate enough to have more than 5 digits on each hand, I think it illustrates perfectly the dilemma that some technology vendors face.
Imagine you are the VP Marketing for Octodigit Inc. – a manufacturer of 8 fingered gloves for men. Your market is pretty small. Really small in fact. Getting new customers is quite a chore and involves some incredibly detailed research, focus and a lot of leg work. However, when you find a prospect – an octodigit (or whatever the term is) male who… Continue reading
Ab initio
Welcome to the Lustratus REPAMA blog from Lustratus Research. I’ve never been a fan of mission statements for the sake of mission statements. I guess that is because most that I read are painted in the blandest shade of beige or taste of vanilla. This tends to make them less of an “inspiring, rallying-call” type of mission statement and more of “a collection of boring indisputable facts that we think the CEO won’t fire us for putting down on paper” type of mission statement.
Mission?
That said, I think it’s worth setting out a plan for the type of material that we’ll be covering in this blog in future editions. So here goes. I want… Continue reading
- 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.