Taking an automated look at marketing the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
As you’ll have read elsewhere in these pages I’ve decided to test REPAMATron – my automated marketing analysis software, by pointing it at the way ESB vendors take their products to market.
As I’ve mentioned before, REPAMATron is a project that looks to automate the REPAMA methodology for analysing and visualising vendors’ go-to-market strategies from the language they use to address their prospects. I’ve chosen the ESB space to test the software because it’s a market I know well and therefore I should be able to decide if the software is making the right sort of inferences behind the language it will be analysing.
At the moment the software is way off alpha release and needs lots of testing… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, esb, go-to-market, marketing, REPAMATron | 
axway, cordys, e2e technologies, Enterprise Service Bus, esb, extol international, fiorano, fujitsu, gxs, hitachi, ibm, intersystems, iway software, magic software, microsoft, mulesoft, MuleSource, natural language processing (nlp), nec, nlp, oracle, pervasive software, progressosoftware, Red Hat, REPAMATron, sap, seeburger, software ag, sopera, spa, sterling commerce, talend, tibco, tmaxsoft, wso2 | 
2 CommentsLustratus predictions for the infrastructure software market in 2011
We all make predictions right? But do we ever return to our predictions and grade ourselves on how accurate we were? Well my Lustratus Research colleague Steve Craggs does that each year with his annual predictions for the infrastructure software market.
In 2011 he looks at likely developments in the following areas…
- Business rules
- Cloud computing
- SOA adoption
- Open source integration
- Appliances
…but not before he looks back at his 2010 predictions and assess whether he was channeling the spirit of Nostradamus or not. Steve’s latest crystal ball gazing can be found on the Lustratus document store here and embedded on the Lustratus REPAMA SlideShare account below.
Danny Goodall
Related posts that you might also be interested in...… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, research | 2011, appliances, BPM, business rules ibm, intel, layer7, open source, open source integration, oracle, predictions, sap, soa, soa appliances, software ag, xml appliances | 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 CommentAn ESB is an ESB is an ESB – n’est pas?
As the saying goes, if it looks like a fish, smells like a fish and tastes like a fish then the chances are that it is a fish. Likewise by any measure the products in the recent REPAMA study into the ESB market segment certainly appear to be ESBs but why then is none of the vendors content with describing their products simply as an “ESB”.
As the REPAMA Marketing Element Distribution (MED) chart below shows, the ESB vendors in the study (Microsoft ESB Guidance 1.0, Oracle Service Bus, Progress Sonic ESB, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus) used the following adjectives, qualifiers, modifiers and euphemisms to describe the offer category of their “ESB”.
- A loosely-coupled messaging environment
- A comprehensive Enterprise… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, esb, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product category, product marketing, SOA and Integration, Vendor-Related Posts | competition, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, competitive, Enterprise Service Bus, esb, Lustratus, marketing strategy, microsoft, Microsoft ESB Guidance, oracle, Oracle Service Bus, product category, progress software, Progress Sonic ESB, REPAMA, tibco, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus | Leave a commentEnterprise Service Bus (ESB) REPAMA findings published
Just a quick note to say that the REPAMA Segment Analysis Study into the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) has been published on the Lustratus.com site. The ESB is a segment that Lustratus knows well as we’ve carried out strategic marketing work for most of the key protagonists at some point. That said, there were a number of surprises – chief amongst these was some of the competitive differentiation strategies that we saw as well as the markedly different approach taken by Microsoft.
The study reverse-engineered the go-to-market strategies of the following vendors and products:
- Microsoft ESB Guidance 1.0
- Oracle Service Bus
- Progress Sonic ESB
- TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus
In reaction to client feedback, we’ve published two sets… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, esb, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, positioning, product marketing, SOA and Integration, Vendor-Related Posts | competition, competitive, Danny Goodall, esb, ESB Guidance, marketing strategy, microsoft, oracle, Oracle Service Bus, Progress, Progress Sonic ESB, REPAMA, Sonic ESB, tibco, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus | Leave a commentPart 8 – The “OUR PRODUCT [has this unique selling proposition] element from the positioning statement
The Unique Selling Proposition
Throughout this series of blogs I’ve been examining the format of the positioning statement that we use in our REPAMA consultancy and analysis services.
In this final entry in the series I’m going to close out by looking at the pay-off, the crescendo, the exclamation mark at the end of the positioning statement – the USP or unique selling proposition.
But first, and for one last time, let’s take a look at this element in the context of the complete positioning statement.
FOR [the ideal customer] WHO [has this specific pain or problem] OUR [product name] IS A[product category] THAT PROVIDES [this main benefit and reason… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, esb, go-to-market, marketing, Marketing Strategy, product marketing, usp, Vendor-Related Posts | benefit, competition, competitive, Danny Goodall, esb, ESB Guidance, Lustratus, marketing strategy, microsoft, oracle, positioning, positioning statement, product marketing, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing, strategy, tibco, usp | Leave a commentPart 1 – The positioning statement
Positioning
Happy 2009! I’ve been in debate with a number of correspondents about the layout and format of the positioning statement that we use in the Lustratus REPAMA-based research. So I’m going to dedicate the next few blog entries to the positioning statement. I hope to answer the following questions.
- What is the positioning statement?
- Why use a positioning statement?
- What is the value of a positioning statement?
- What is the format of a positioning statement?
The first thing to say is that over the years, having worked with some of the best product marketing people in the industry, I’ve seen many different approaches to positioning and equally many different formats for positioning statements. Each of them,… Continue reading
Posted in All Blog Categories, communication, Competition and Competitive Intelligence, ideal customer, marketing, Marketing Strategy, pain, positioning, product category, product marketing, product name, reason to buy, usp, Vendor-Related Posts | alternative, benefit, competition, competitive, competitor, Danny Goodall, ideal customer, Lustratus, main benefit, marketing strategy, oracle, pain, positioning, positioning statement, product category, product marketing, product name, REPAMA, Strategic Marketing, strategy, tibco, usp | 1 CommentTeaching Oracle to Suck Eggs
Working out the depositioning strategy used by specific vendors is normally complex. Do they actively look to emphasise their positives over their competitors? Do they look to highlight their competitors’ perceived negative attributes? Do they infer who the competition is? Do they actively name the competitors, or the class of competitor?
Reverse-engineering this information usually involves a great deal of inference and subtle interpretation of the way certain features are spun and certain advantages are claimed. In some cases I even conclude that the vendor has no specific competitive marketing strategy and that no direct depositioning of the competition occurs. So it was with some mutual professional respect that I started to review Oracle’s… 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.