Rolling Boulders and Social Media

If you are a marketer, it's time to face a hard truth.....the world has changed and you have close to zero control over your online brands. This is a big contrast to the good old days of advertising and communications, circa 1998, when you could still exert tremendous brand control through advertising, promotions and PR.

Am I exaggerating? Maybe a bit, but let me use a rolling boulder analogy to explain. Here are two scenarios:

1. Flat Ground - image a big boulder sitting in the middle of a nice flat lawn. To move it, you simply push that rock in the direction that you want. The more people (or $) you throw behind the effort, the further and faster you can get the boulder to move.
2. A Hill - now imaging the same boulder perched on the side of a hill. Once you get the boulder rolling, gravity is in charge. You can maybe guide this big rock with a nudge here and a push there, but as it gains momentum you lose true control.

Controlling rolling boulders is not too different from trying to control brands and your online image in today's social media world. With the gravity of  bloggers, tweeters and all the other social media options, it is practically impossible to maintain control over your brand, there are just too many possible alternative viewpoints and inputs.  So, your brand is no longer just what you say it is, your brand is what the social media crowd influences your brand to be. All is not lost.....being a part of the online conversation is good and you can still guide it.

The Bottom Line: If corporations, agencies, marketing / communications execs have no true control of their  online brands, what can they do? Well, that's a billion $ question and the answer is "5"... as in come back soon to read my next post on the Five Rules For Steering Rolling Boulders (....and guiding your Social Media programs).

Google Wave - The Opportunities Are Tremendous

I just previewed Google Wave and the opportunities for extension & integration are tremendous. I am excited to see the apps from B2C developers (Lonely Planet already has a cool tool) while B2B SW companies have an awesome new platform / capability to integrate and extend their functionality (and value props) with.

Starting out, SAP and Salesforce.com have developed two elegant apps for BPM and Customer Support respectively. The SAP BPM solution raises the bar on competing BPM designers and workflow tools, while the Salesforce Robot concept is very innovative.

There is tremendous value for B2B SW apps that require sequential tasks to now be done collaboratively in real-time. Once you add in voice integration and text transcription capabilities that Ribbit has developed, you can get a really differentiated solution (until the competition catches up). For example, if you need to design, review and iterate something, Google Wave now makes it possible to do the three steps at the same time. Off the top of my head, the following companies can (or will need to) leverage Google Wave like functionality to deliver an enhanced user experience:

• iRise - application designs and interactions can now be developed and reviewed real-time with playback;
• Pegasystems / Lombardi / etc. - SAP is raising the bar on collaborative process design. These BPM companies will need to match capabilities;
• AutoDesk / PTC / Dessault - developing and reviewing engineering blueprints can now be done more interactively;
• Adobe - real-time reviews of visual deliverables and copy will be tremendously valuable when the editors and reviewers can all work on the same information.

It will be interesting to see how Google Wave evolves and how B2B and B2C developers leverage the platform.

Cloud Computing is THE SaaS killer...with a little help from some friends.

Did the title make you go "HUH"? Let me explain.

First a couple of definitions:

• SaaS or Software as a Service [from Wikipedia] - "is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand." Key characteristics:

• network-based access to, and management of, commercially available software
• activities managed from central locations rather than at each customer's site, enabling customers to access applications remotely via the Web
• application delivery typically closer to a one-to-many model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including architecture, pricing, partnering, and management characteristics
• centralized feature updating, which obviates the need for end-users to download patches and upgrades. 

• Cloud Computing [from Wikipedia] - "is a paradigm of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.^[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them. Cloud computing customers do not generally own the physical infrastructure serving as host to the software platform in question. Instead, they avoid capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use. Many cloud-computing offerings employ the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utility services (such as electricity) are consumed, while others bill on a subscription basis. Sharing "perishable and intangible" computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not unnecessarily left idle (which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development). 

SaaS has differentiated itself based on being more cost effective and easier to deploy than traditional SW tradeoffs are that all customers (tenants of the SaaS infrastructure) are updated at the same time, customers are locked into the deployment and customization is virtually impossible. Now there is a way for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to deliver the ease and cost effectiveness of SaaS without many tradeoffs. How? By combining three evolving technologies:  Cloud Computing + Software Appliances + Automated Provisioning Management. Let's call this solution combination: Cloud Application Deployments or CLADS. 

How CLADS can work is pretty simple:
1. As part of a standard Software Lifecycle, a Software Appliance would be developed for each released build.
2. These Software Appliances would be made available for distribution
3. For a "SaaS Like" distribution, the Software Appliance could be automatically provisioned to a Cloud Computing provides like Rackspace or GoGrid.

Here are just a couple of ISV business use cases where CLADS levels the playing field:

• Providing Demo / Trial Accounts:  'Free Demos' are a staple marketing component of SaaS providers. For ISVs, creating demo and trial accounts is often difficult, time consuming and costly. There are multiple components and ISVs typically do not have the hosting infrastructure expertise that a SaaS provider has. Also, creating demo environments based on a dedicated physical infrastructure can be very CLADs. With CLADs, ISVs benefit because:
• Hosting is provided by a 3rd party with infrastructure expertise
• Costs are variable based on actual usage - you only pay for what you use
• The ISV can maintain strategic focus
• Deploying Implementation Environments:    Enterprise deployments (ie. non-SaaS) often require multiple environments for development & configuration, for staging, for issue validation and for production. Each of these environments requires upfront setup and then on-going maintenance. With CLADS, ISVs benefit because:
• Customers can get their different environments provisioned and ready to use very quickly with minimal effort
• Upgrades to customer environments are easier since they can be done when the customer choose to have the upgrade, not when the SaaS provider chooses to do the upgrade

Bottom Line: With  Cloud Computing + Software Appliances + Automated Provisioning and  Management, ISVs (open source and closed source) are able to eliminate many of the advantages that SaaS providers have used to differentiate themselves without losing the benefits that ISVs have traditionally had. The next logical conclusion is that without their differentiators, many SaaS options (see my blog post on different SaaS types for why I say "many" not "all"***) will be at a competitive disadvantage versus traditional ISVs.........and that's how Cloud Computing (with a little help from some friends) is THE SaaS Killer.


*** Note: SaaS will not be going away as a delivery model. However, undifferentiated offerings  (ie. those that don't bring a special sauce" will have a very  tough time going forward.

Enterprise B2B - It's all about the Value Proposition.....feature/function just gets you into the game.

I have been helping a former colleague (Mark) create the marketing plan and product roadmap for a new product concept that he is working on. Without revealing the details of the idea, it is a very innovative B2B SaaS solution for Cloud Computing management.  Along the way, one question has consistently driven him crazy. Here is a paraphrasing of how the conversations typically go:

Graham:      So what is the business value of the solution?
Mark:         It will help customers make the management of their Cloud Computing initiatives a lot easier.
Graham:      How?
Mark:         By giving the administrators more information and tools.
Graham:      How will the "information and tools" cut costs or increase revenues?
Mark:         I don't know but there is a lot of really good functionality.

OR

Graham:     Why would somebody buy this solution?
Mark:        Because it will make life easier when managing multiple Cloud Computing initiatives.
Graham:    Compared to other alternatives, will it save time? save money? reduce risk? increase uptime?
Mark:       Yes
Graham:    What's the typical ROI?
Mark:       Hmmm

These two conversations are pretty typical of the gap between a feature/function product concept (often in engineering*) and a go-to-market strategy with value based positioning (in marketing & sales). In Enterprise B2B feature / function positioning just doesn't cut it anymore. Buyers are more savvy than even a decade ago and are driven by bottom line considerations. Buyers are asking: "How is this going to help my business and how am I going to get approval to spend the money?" You need to have an answer and your product management / marketing team needs to make sure that it is a good one.

The Bottom Line: when selling a B2B product, you absolutely need a baseline set of features to "get into the game", but the business value proposition is what closes the deal (and supports higher price tags).

*Note: I have found this conversation typically happening when Product Management is aligned with engineering and "feature / function" focused versus business focused.

Twitter? Show Me The B2B ROI

A colleague of mine recently asked if we were doing anything with Twitter, and she was shocked when I said "No". I proceeded to explain that while I am always looking for new ways to get exposure for IQ, I can't justify the expense (yes I know it's free - but as with any other communications initiative, it does have a content creation and internal "maintenance" cost) without an ROI. All my other tactical marketing programs have an ROI expectation, Twitter would be no different.

There is so much hype about Twitter right now, that the need to quantify actual business value is getting overlooked. If there is no value (measured by return on investment), why do it? If you Bing "Twitter ROI" you get about 535,000 hits with Dell's $3m total revenues as being the ROI poster child.....not too impressive given Dell's multi-billion dollar annual revenues and that they have been Tweeting for 2 years.

For B2B marketing, especially of enterprise applications, there is an even bigger hurdle to Tweeting.....sales dynamics. Who is going to follow you unless they are either in a search and selection mode, or they are a competitor? If a potential customer is looking for your type of product, they will engage you directly. Where is the value to them to get Tweets from you every 20 minutes? The information they need to make their decisions is coming from a sales rep directly at a very different pace. Other information will be gathered online via search, from analysts or from references.

So, I have discussed Tweeting with both my Marketing and PR agencies and neither can provide a compelling reason to take the jump. It will be interesting to see how the medium evolves.

Inspired By Excellence

In my last post I mentioned Kiva and Mint, two organizations that I have recently chanced upon and have been impressed by. Let me add another one called Project Jing - it is a screen capture software product by the makers of Camtasia. Basically it adds a "small sunburst circle" to the top of your screen that you can click on when you want to take a picture or record something on your screen. When you are done recording, it saves the image / recording to an online server - you can then email a link to the recording or embed it in an IM or blog. See how it works by clicking this link: http://screencast.com/t/CaOFQrtS - it is a recording of me writing this blog. Background music is courtesy of Pandora.

There is a commonality to each of these products: EXCELLENCE.

1. they are unique concepts and valuable solutions that are facilitated by technology;
2. their messaging, visuals and branding are concise, consistent and powerful;
3. their User Interfaces are elegant, easy to use and very well done (Project Jing is especially unique); and finally
4. their execution is flawless across the board.

Excellence does not happen by chance. It requires planning, teamwork, creative thinking, determination and lots of hard work. While I have always considered myself to be creative, highly motivated and successful at most things that I put my mind to, I am still inspired by each of these products to truly deliver excellence.

Giving Back: Part 2 Messaging and Branding

In an August 08 post I mentioned the Taproot Foundation, a pro bono marketing organization that I volunteer for as an Account Director. After completing a Messaging & Branding project in January for Youth Build Boston, I recently visited their website. It was extremely gratifying to see the messaging and branding work that we delivered incorporated directly into their whole site.