Software vendors to the enterprise spectrum of companies seem huge and daunting, and they are, unfortunately for them it means they are too big to wish to notice smaller tasks or out of the core product expansions.
The way product vendors work is in high scale mode filtering the noise to get the important stuff, and they are correct about working this way, there are too many people involved in projects to be able to notice every single complaint and request.
But this filtering also opens the market to the smaller players,
Imaging a little kid eating a cracker, the main bites go in but there are lots of crums left over. our Enterprise software vendor is probably more efficiant but there are still opportunities.
The opportunities can be vast and have many shapes and forms but they are there.
Some of the opportunities i am expose to are in the partnership and expertise areas.

1. Complete solutions.
2. Supplement software.
3. Bridging Gaps between solutions.
4. Supplementary products and solutions.

These have been the gaps always you are probably saying.
You are right, but these days the vendors had to cut most of their people to keep afloat at the recession.
Usually the first to go are the people interacting with clients since no clients paid their salary they became a liability.
The clients had their own issues and have released their people, thus in greater need for solutions or services.
The outcome from these actions is an increase in these gaps and many opportunities are not addressed due to the understaffing .

But you don’t want to be another “Partner” or a service provider do you?
If you do then go and do that and stop wasting your time, you need to make the most of now since partners always stuff up and get the boot.
If you don, you need to identify the opportunity in creating supplementary products or services.
There are 4 scenarios to these gaps.

1. The vendor is missing completely the market needs and is there only because he was there or he is the safest bet (no one got fires for buying IBM).
2. The vendors product is ok but there are a lot of features and twaking to do to get it working.
3. The vendor product is great but there are some features and integration points missing.
4. The vendor product is perfect. there is side business to be made.

The Vendor is missing the market needs completely, this one is simple, make a product that is better in the market vertical you found the problem in and make it hard for other partners to penetrate.
The vendors product is OK, look at how you can create installation processes, visual configuration aids, addons and plugins that make the product complete, try to start within a vertical.
The vendors product is great or perfect leaves you less to deal with the product and more to enhance it, create enhancements or complimentary products like tracking and recommendations.

There are a few more unexplored solutions like hosting of major Enterprise products and reselling them as a hosted service, WCM market will be a good starting point.

In my mind there are so many points where you can become a player in the Enterprise market and be successful because you are small and very hungry.
The barriers of entry have been dropped due to the wish to lower the cost of external resources and current project, this is the best time to act.

The new Apple iPad was titled the new way to produce content.
But that seemed a bit far fetch considering the configuration and hardware spec, no camera for instance.
Everyone quickly realized that this tool is for consuming content, lots of types of rich media will be the biggest segment.
Yes it has the potential of a book reader but lets face it, LED display is not good for book reading its good for movie watching.
looking at all the information around i think we missed the big picture.
Apple business path is missing in most of the talks and the focus is on the purchasers and what will you be able to do with iPad or the ways it will be delivered.
Apple in my opinion is looking for the new iPhone trick.
if you are not aware of the iPhone trick i will elaborate a bit, when the iPhone came out Apple bundled it with a store, the application store, this step was based on the success of the iTunes store when the iPod ruled the world.
The business move was to diminish the telephones company to a mere pipe supplying Apples content to the Apple hardware, the traditional way was that the phone company sold you the content and not the phone manufacturer. Apple turn the table and AT&T were pissed, they now lost a big margin and have to upgrade the hardware to support the traffic, but they got loads of money for that data traffic.

Nokia tried and failed the iPhone trick with the Nokia Store, it never soared to the heights of the App Store, my quick guess is that they were not strict about the production of software and the location of its sales to their store like Apple did and that doomed the store as useless.

iPad is looking like the second try of Apple over the Networks, after the failure of the Apple TV Steve jobs probably wondered how to get his way in controlling another retail channel.
iTunes is a great platform to support the purcahse/rental of movies but it never had the hardware counterpart to elevate it up to the level of a network.
There were always movies/tv shows to be purchased out of the iTunes store but this has never been a big segment of the store.
last year apple sold around 3 billion songs compared with the mere 5 million videos.

iPad will change this, its the best video mobile device, big 9.7 inches LED backlit display, 10 hours of watching video and 16-64GB of storage.
The video interface is great.
The price is reasonable.
What else can you wish for?

You probably could but this is not the place… talk to Steve and while you at it remind him the MacBook Pro update.

Lets hope that the networks wont find out that most of their grays anatomy/desperate housewifes fans got the iPad and are buying the show from the iTunes Store now and loving it.

A few things to make this a true success will be to introduce subscriptions to the iTunes store like you have in your local cable company. this will be the nail in the coffin for both the networks and the Tivos out there.

This second take on the networks makes AT&T smile ( scream is more like it ), Steve Jobs promise for more traffic then they can dream of is just around the corner.

I have to also correct my standing over the iPad, i though this is another MacBook Air flop but i think its not going to be that.
As for the flash support, enough was said but my 2c on the subject are that its not relevant for a media tablet and that the performance/heat that will be produced by supporting flash will render te iPad useless. taking into an affect the business plan i just thought of i think it makes sense not to support flash as it is not going to support the business.

There is another option for the video distribution and that is YouTube with a premium flavor, it could happen though apple are too centric to let it happen.

I have joined the crowd and bashed the iPad on my twitter, i guess i had to let off the steam for the silence in the MacBook Pro front.
I was waiting for a new release to get me one but i guess i will get it later if at all.
Back to the iPad.
The iPad is funny, at first look it resembles a big iPod touch with some 3G voodoo.
Its a bit fragile looking were my initial thoughts, this will be only tested through time but i am sure to get, if they ever manufacture, the incase rubber back ontop the carrying case.
Just incase it decides to jump out of my hands.

The ipad in my opinion has great opportunity for a few people.
Its simple enough to get my grandma on a computer and use facebook.
Its robust enough to enable a friend roaming the country to control his server farm through logMeIn.
its good enough to entertain my boy for hours.
its screen is god enough to read an ebook or the news, not for hours though.

In summery it seems that iPad is good enough to do most of the tasks, in a good price point.
The pricing at first seems to be aiming at the kindle, but i think it is not. its priced to hit the netbook and atom machines.

I do fail to see people watching videos with iPad on the train in rush hour. the ips is great for sharing with friends but not with your cellmates on the train, nor that the size helps to stand holding it in one hand while been pushed.
But home/park/coffee/flight/sitting in the office that is where it will rule.

The other market which will be the greatest is the iPod users looking at shelling 150$ more to get the bigger screened iPod.

Multitasking is a big issue and my guess is that it will deter youngsters from moving away fro iphone as it only disconnects them from their friends.
So its not going to be a y-gen success in my opinion.
Some thing about not having multitasking makes me ponder about the HP slate, how will it affect the market amongst the y-gens and tech savvy people.

Will i get one? i dont think so, i got the kindle iPhone app to read books and i use it allot, my needs are for a much stronger processing warehouse that will be capable running my experiments.

Steve will you give me the i7 MBP please? as much as i like the iPad i have no use for it at the moment.
Please….

This subject was introduced by a group of WCM guys and will be discussed in the best Web Conference in the world by Janus Boye.
This will include a Web Content Management track that is suggesting it will give guidance as it states

How do you get it right? What are the pitfalls to avoid? On this track you can learn from internationally recognized analysts, who will be joined by practitioners, all sharing their insights on how to get it right.

to solve your earthly problems with the WCM implementations.
The panel will be Janus Boye representing the customer viewpoint, Jarrod Gingras of CMS Watch representing the analyst massive, and Jon Marks defending the honour of the implementers.

This session will be an interactive one where you can use twitter to submit questions about the problems or solutions you had to WCM implementations using #fixwcm tag.

But what is really wrong about the WCM that we are in need of this session?

Inspired by the twitter tag #fixwcm i was pondering about the CMS sickness and what is the methods i see to cure that.

some people suggest that the WCM term is bigger then what it should be and thus too hard to handle and needs to be cut into smaller chunks.

Others put the blame on estimates and project schedules, or more politely on the sales process for cutting down on the implementation times.

But what is wrong with the WCM products and implementations?

The customer is not happy with the solutions and usually works with it only due to necessity not because they love using it.

But why is that?
The technology has matured enough to satisfy any customers need.
Implementers have matured.
The web has matured and implementation processes been formed. we have Agile methodology to make the implementation in the most versatile way.

This should have been sufficient to support the creation of the best fitting products for each and every customer. but it just doesn’t cut it.

Whats is wrong with that?

Interaction is what comes tomy mind every time i think of what went wrong.
Internal and external interactions are the place where we lose the implementation.
it starts with the initial process of selecting the right product through translation of business processes to requirements and failing of the requirements to be formed into artifacts in development and to the final grave of testing.
When selecting a product you are dealing with the Sales teams of each vendor and they want you in, that is where you get the more generic answers “Yeah our product can do that” and they are correct but it takes time to make the product do that.
Jon Marks had a discussion about the selection process. iguess there is no clear solution to this enigma.

It continues with the Dictionary each party is using through to politics and risk management.
To prove the dictionary point just ask any of your clients what CMS is, you will be in for a bit of an earthquake.

So what is to be done?
Some of the points that were up in the air like simplification of terms under the CMS with smaller chunks will create an easier dictionary.
use of simpler tools for the implementation.

The way i see it changing is with the maturity of the clients and the implementors in understanding what should be done when implementing the WCM and been trouthful about the weight and cost of such a process we will have a better implementation and love to WCM solutions.
Peace and Love
Yuval.

Just dropping a Wave demo using the Wavr plugin.

Can you submit to this one not from the wave?

Was looking at the prediction market post by Andrew McAfee titled Mobs Rule, which in my opinion misses the point, he describes one of the companies he is involved in Crowdcast i started pondering about the validity of a prediction market as an enterprise 2.0 tool.
Taking on this tool has some distinct usage for businesses that is capable of generating value.
Avoiding the need to rely solely on the Project Management methodology to predict the delivery date of a product or the end of an it upgrade, adding to that the ability to predict the success of the latest campaign, is a extremely efficient tool that is able to generate significant advantages and better profit.
My personal problem with the Prediction Markets is its a self-fulfilling prophecy once the prediction is out, and it tends to direct the out come more then predict it.
The base product of Crowdcast uses an interface, from the demo, looking quite rudimentary and may be a bit too graphic, seems like it is not a poll like and uses adjustments to select a response.

I hope they have more interfaces that enable the users to make a selection though.
Crowdcast promise to bring the market internally and make the organization as the crowd to do the selection.
This is probably good in a very limited type of organizations, one that could have the internal critics, the huge ones. if you read te book the wisdom of crowds you are probably familiar with the two basic assumptions that the crowd needs to bet on the score and needs to be heterogeneous to achieve the best predictions.
So how can we make this a part of the toolset if the enterprise is not as big as it needs and certainly not as heterogeneous in the thought process and loyalty to the company.
I love the google prediction market experiment excerpt

In the last three years, Google has conducted the largest corporate experiment with prediction markets we are aware of. In this paper, we illustrate how markets can be used to study how an organization processes information.
We document a number of biases in Google’s markets, most notably an optimistic bias.
Newly hired employees are on the optimistic side of these markets, and optimistic biases are significantly more pronounced on days when Google stock is appreciating. We find correlated trading among employees who sit within a few feet of one another and employees with social or work relationships.
The results are interesting in light of recent research on the role of optimism in entrepreneurial firms, as well as recent work on the importance of geographic and social proximity in explaining information flows in firms and markets.

So how do we even the score with some pessimism? Look no further! We need to expose this to the external public as a quiz with prizes.
That could be a solution to the issues, but its not a silver bullet due to the type of information exposed to the decision guesser, and i am going back to the book where all the guessers were expose to the entirety of the data even if it was classified in the case of the submarine.
How can we make this a better tool to the enterprise? i say, again, make it a flexible tool that is used in several scenarios and let the organization culture set the pace.
Making a tool that is not just for the intranet or just for the internet, as Predictify is, will enable the organization to add this web 2.0 tool to the Enterprise 2.0 utility belt.

So you want to start a business? Here’s a checklist of things I would do before paying a dollar to any one to develope my software.

• Focus Dude! (Crush, Finding Nemo) Narrow your vertical to the smallest segment you can, You need to think small at the bgining and aim big. Feature creep is a killer at an early stage and companies often try to do too much. Your end product, if it comes to market, will be so much smaller than you imagine.
• Zoom inOutline 2-3 things you things to focus on within your chosen niche. The list will probably narrow down to one idea, remember that feedback is going to make you Alter/Mend your idea.
• Shop Around Find 5 example companies that do at least some aspects of what your company should do and explore them extensivel. try using their services in a trial mode or even paid mode and keep a list of features and group all their features into
  • Features they do well
  • Features I can do better/different
  • Features you can collaborate on
  • Features you got inspired to do that are not in their spec

  Rank the items you found by importance, use more then high rank at least once,

• Use your imagination take the list look at the most important features and imagine what ties this all together in one product/site/company.
  Do you see more then one product? excelent! find a way to create a suplimentry product.
  Choose the minimum ammount of featurs you can define as a product.
  What features can be a suplementry service?
  Play around and have some fun.
• Put your thinking to the test communicate your ideas to people in the industry, preferably the leaders of the industry, mention the smallest versions of your idea and get feedback. After their feedback, go through this whole process over again.
  You could try Blog/Forums and solicit the known products to get some more feedback.
• Build the plan you have validated the product and know how to build it. just a small thing to do before that is to get the business side of things sorted out. build a plan that handles branding/marketing, timing, financials. make some thing that will cover the fundomentals.
  
• Build ItOnly now you are ready to talk to a contract developer. may be find a person who is looking to join the adventure? but someone you can trust to make the job and in a timly manner based on your business plan.

So good luck to all of you who are about to build their startup. i hope you will succeed.

One of our local partner just partnered up with OpenText. this is quite good to know we are to keep our partners are not leaving us with this new constellation.
Most of the guys that are in StoneBridge Systems are like family to us in VPS so it is a great news.

and regarding the news here is the item i got the news from.

I have been addressing the issue in previous post oblivious to the fact that it is a growing phenomena.
Now it became even a user driven one when MG Siegler from techcrunch decided to tell the services like face book how much would he pay for a yearly subscription.
I am not a fan of the Pay for a subscription or parish without knowing my services for longer then trial usage, but for the freemium deal i am all about.

As the comment i have made to the post i believe that the usage of paid services with a base price rather then giving you some services and then charging you for the premium package is a wrong business model for most of the services in the web. people got used to the free and like it and are willing to pay for the pro if they require the additional services.
I use flickr and i am a pro member since i saw the value in the service, as a counter point i use the AgileTracker and i am not going to use the pro service Agile Agenda supply since i am not in need of that and i need only the client locally.
Will i be more lenient to buy the service when i require? yes i will do so since their tool is great and when in sync probably greater.
So what is freemium at all?
Freemium is offering a basic or a service with ads free and giving you the option either to upgrade to remove the ads or add the premium functionality.
And no trial of a very expensive software is not a freemium business model nor is a free service going into a pay business model. Oracle XE and SQL Server Express (growing recently to the Visual Studio Express family) are a wonderful example of a freemium business model In response to the MySql assault.

But for services to start charging money at the front door after years of free services? that is just wrong, foolish and wrong.
If you want to expose users to your alternatives you just need to push them and let nature do its course. i am looking for the next free P2P radio client.
Actually i am very happy i left Last.fm since then they managed to expose all their clients listening information to the RIAA and made a nice bar fight with techcrunch denying it.
But that was just because they needed the money… i can lash at last.fm now for ages but lets go the the original argument i am making. if Last.fm would not go and make you pay for a service you have gotten for a small fee of exposing your data to them and letting them rip the songs of your machine. and they used commercials more offering an ad free pro version with ability to do more in the widget world and in the community will you not take that opportunity?
And last.fm are an annoying example since they were using your services as much as you used theirs to get your songs available to other users.
I assume that this was a more appropriate contract then the one they lazily devised in their couches.
Assume that face book will now charge you for image sizes and video uploads making you a pro user for 15$ a year. that will be a reasonable price especially if it came with some more features.
The only problem there is that they might lose some users that were dangling away or the ones with moral standards.
And some of their rivals like my space would get more traffic (although they are number one any way).
But i am sure that steps like that from a competitor will make others follow.
Google will be the last one to move since they are running the biggest advertising agency in the world and will not want any one not to be exposed to the content due to some little fee.
Having said that they are a very good candidate to put their freemium services.
So what is the future? i say freemium is going to be the best breed approach to get users hooked and if you have a good service you will get your crowds hoarding in.
What sort of incentive will be given for the clients to upgrade can very and will be probably dominated by ad free, more space and more features. though i hope to see some more incentives in the features and space then in the ad free.
But it all could be because i admire Fred Wilson and he favors the model as well.
So Freemium it is for me. with a side dish of features if i may.