[Zope] A Tale from IBM land...
Garry Steedman
gs@styrax.com
Mon, 25 Jun 2001 11:48:11 +0000
Oliver,
not a bad idea, i would be interested!
cheers,
Garry
On 24 Jun 2001, at 12:32, Oliver Bleutgen wrote:
From: Oliver Bleutgen <myzope@gmx.net>
Send reply to: Oliver Bleutgen <myzope@gmx.net>
To: zope@zope.org
Subject: Re: [Zope] A Tale from IBM land...
Date sent: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 12:32:40 +0200
> > Chris Withers wrote:
> >> For example, if they sell a "solution" that envolves IBM hardware,
> >> M$ and IBM licenses (say 40% total value) and then their
> >> consultancy for development and customisation (ie 60%), they're
> >> only actually adding 60% value to the relationship.
> >>[..]
> > This is unfortunately also a two-way street. Often companies *dont
> > want* to offer 100% of the value. People feel comfortable buying
> > things
> >>from companies that sell MS or IBM, becuase they perceive that MS or
> >>IBM
> > will be around for a while, and "nobody ever got fired for buying
> > [insert solution here]". The 60% company can go away and they won't
> > be out of business. Thus that 40% is very important to them.
>
> And I guess that 10-20% of that 40% are again invested for marketing
> from companies like IBM or MS. So the VAR knows he doesn't really lose
> all the money he pays for the software, instead it's used to generate
> marketing pressure and other goodies (take Chris' "IBM certified for
> e-Business" example). They get nice developer conventions and other
> things, all of that is done to suggest a spirit of success and to show
> a common goal. All in all it might not be _that_ easy to persuade VARs
> to use OSS.
>
> > The customer doesn't realize:
>
> > 1) That open source makes that argument largely irrelevant.
> > But we don't really have the marketing muscle to fight this
> > battle, at least where it needs to be fought.
>
> > 2) That there are hundreds of consultants familiar with
> > Zope/[insert
> > other open source solution here] that can take over that 100%
> > when the one who sold it to you goes out of business. This is
> > also a marketing problem.
>
> These two point are IMO only sufficient to get a tie in
> the battle zope vs [proprietary offering from MS/IBM] - if any,
> because for every zope consultant there are 100 (or 1000)
> notes/asp etc. consultants.
>
>
> > Grassroots, "line-level" employee support is most of the support
> > that open source has got, and that's its marketing engine. The
> > engine has been incredibly successful. More successful than anyone
> > could have hoped. But it's still a fact that people don't like to
> > buy something they haven't seen on TV...
>
> > Think of a high-level executive making a decision about buying a
> > content management system like a foreigner on a business trip in a
> > strange land. Everyone is bugging him to eat at their restaurant.
> > He recognizes none of the names of these restaurants, and doesn't
> > really even understand what kind of food each restaurant is selling.
> > But then he sees the McDonald's "golden arches" (MS/IBM).. and he
> > knows that. He knows McDonalds isn't the best food, but it's a safe
> > bet in a foreign country when all he wants to do is eat and move on.
>
> > You need to understand this mentality to successfully sell open
> > source software to the OSS-unaware. You need to produce the
> > soundbite version of what a particular solution can do for the
> > company, and don't get religious about it, just compare the features
> > and the prices of the "McDonalds" solution to the OSS solution, and
> > let the folks come to their own conclusions.
>
>
> I think one has to differ the types of potential clients, and
> they are not always recognizable by the size of their company.
>
> 1. Nearly no technical knowledge, don't know words like
> "application server", know names like IBM or Microsoft, but
> only MS is more familiar because they use their desktop OS
> and office applications.
> Their motivation is to either
> a) Get their first web-presence
> b) Revamp their existing (static) web-presence because they
> think its to ugly and/or they want to get new functionality
> like putting in content by themselves.
>
> 2. Some IT knowledge, they have already a web-presence but
> got burned (their agency charges the big bucks for just
> changing telephone numbers), and are critical because of that.
>
> 3. Good IT knowledge, are able to do a lot by themselves,
> often just lack the time or design capabilities to
> do their own web presence.
>
>
> Only types 2 and 3 will question the choice of the
> underlying plattform. And it's often not the decision
> makers who will do that, but the IT personnel.
> And it helps a lot to first try to gain ground with
> the decision makers, because an open minded (because
> his boss told him to be open minded) IT expert
> can really be persuaded to see zope's strength.
>
> This gets me to the point of my drivel:
>
> What do others think of the idea of a glossy
> brochure (like 4 pages) which can be used as
> a handout about zope for decision makers?
> Nothing academic, just pure marketing speak.
> Heavy on buzzwords, short on (technical) information,
> but nice to look at.
> It should be downloadable from zope.org as a photoshop
> document, with layers etc. fully intact.
> Perhaps with some blank space (one page), so that
> everyone could include company specific information,
> perhaps not.
> Then everyone who wants to could just use that to
> produce zope-specific marketing material.
> Mind you, I don't want to say that DC should produce
> that, I guess more people in this list have graphic
> designers in their company.
>
> cheers,
> oliver
>
>
>
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+-------------------------------------------+
Garry Steedman mailto:gs@styrax.com
Styrax Associates http://www.styrax.com/
"The Good Man has no shape."
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