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 Taxonomy – A Nice Definition With a Little Structure too – Part 3
As mentioned earlier in these pages I’m documenting my quest to arrive at a market segmentation model of the cloud computing market. This will allow me to perform a series of REPAMA competitive marketing studies into various vendors in the cloud computing space. I’m uncovering more and more interesting research as I go and one such piece is described below.
The smart people at NIST (The US Governmental agency responsible for something or other – standards I think) have released some interesting work on cloud computing. Aimed at reaching a common set of definitions around cloud computing and its use cases, but recognising that these will change over time, their work can be found here.
I’ve reproduced some sections… Continue reading
Cloud Computing REPAMA – Taxonomy and the Role of Professional Services – Part 2
I’m continuing the REPAMA Segment Analysis Study into the Cloud Computing market attempting to arrive at a solid market segmentation and two things have become very clear.
Firstly, every vendor with a remotely related proposition appears to have added the word “cloud” to their product name, presumably in an attempt to bask in the reflected glory that cloud computing provides, perhaps in an effort to appease their investors. This means that there are a large number of vendors claiming to be part of specific segments that may or may not have legitimate claims. This makes the process I’m going through confusing and messy. And if I, as a marketing analyst am having problems, I wonder what sort of success a… 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.
Related posts that you might also be interested in...
REPAMA Segment Analysis Study into Cloud Computing – Part 1 Taxonomy
In putting together our REPAMA analysis into the go-to-market strategies of the vendors in the cloud computing space, we first must arrive at an agreed segmentation of the market. This blog documents that process.
OK so as I mentioned here, I am going to carry out a series of REPAMA Segment Analysis Studies into the cloud computing market. The desired end product is a series of reverse-engineered go-to-market strategies for a set of vendors in each of the categories within the cloud computing market. But first I need to decide on the segmentation of the various technical offers in the cloud computing space. After that I need to decide which vendors fit into each of the different proposition… Continue reading
The 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
Standards-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
Standards-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
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.
Just a quick note to say that the updated
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.