Performance 360

Accessibility of your application. What interfaces?

2012-01-02T12:32:00.000+05:30

If you have a collaboration application that improves productivity and is going to be used day in and day out, here are some alternate interfaces that your users would like for your application. You would have known most of it for sure, but I thought of listing it here for the record as I have observed the usefulness of some of them in www.socialcast.com (an enterprise collaboration tool).

Desktop App that shows information inline.
Outlook Connector to view the info in dedicate folders
iPhone App
iPad App
Android App
Bookmarklets using Add Ons for Firefox, Chrome, Safari
Browser native viewers by using Opera Extensions, Safari extensions, Firefox Add Ons, I.E. Add Ons, Chrome extensions
Share (post) via email
Show messages as
Blackberry App
Google gadget or GMail Gadget
Facebook App to show message in facebook
RSS Feed
Vista Gadget

3 Billion Devices Run Java - Oracle marketing Java

2011-11-20T17:57:00.001+05:30

Oracle monetizes and runs a lot of their technology well. Sun was a technology company that helped many others but itself make money :-)

Here is how Oracle is now positioning Java, something that Sun Microsystems failed to do. Here is a screenshot of the Java update installer that sells to the masses what Java can do !

A nice lesson on technology marketing. Even if you make rockets, spell it out in a language that is easy for your consumers to understand.

What should Mail for businesses do?

2011-11-11T12:43:00.000+05:30

Today email is like the blood that runs through the veins of a business. Businesses use it for communicating with customers and collaborating with employees. It is used for various reasons like sending an invoice, sending a generated price quote, scheduling a meeting, replying to technical queries, sending out bulk mailers about special offers, and lots of other tasks that help generate revenue.

If the number of emails sent for, say, replying to technical queries increases, it becomes hard to track it in a usual mail box. So the need for Support Management Software arises. Likewise the need for scheduling multi-user meetings and keeping oneself more organized, resulted in full fledged calendering software.

At a smaller scale email is actually good enough. Keeping your email unread is a basic way to remind yourself of a pending task.

Now when the number of interactions increase, that signals there is more customers and employees which signals more revenue for the business, which means there is a need for some special software. This software could be specialized software like CRM, Support Software or even better a mail suite that helps you get the job done right from within your mail client. For example, a reminder for contacting a client after two weeks, could be an email turning to unread state at the specified date and time and coming right on top based on a reminder you set for the last email with the client!

I would call these mailing solutions as "smart mail suites" as they give some sort of modelling (some additional capabilities) for a normal mail box.Now for every million dollar business, there will be tens of $100K businesses. These $100K businesses, I will call micro-businesses. For these micro businesses, smart mail suites are good enough. They can't afford to pay for integration of specialized software. They also find it an overkill to jump between interfaces to use these specialized software too.

Everyone needs an integrated view of their business communication. That usually needs a million dollar software integration project to make happen in a big business. Why create the problem in the first place for a micro business, if you can provide those essentials in a "smart mail suite" ?

We could go one step further and tweak this use case for mail for micro businesses, mail for SMBs and more.

I will close with one additional point. Your hosted mail solution should obviously be miles ahead of hotmail.com of 1990s?

IT Team Job at stake?

2011-11-08T11:53:00.001+05:30

If your IT Team has been caught napping when the virtualization, cloud and now SaaS wave is sweeping, I would say its your fault. Sorry for being harsh.

The main value I see about the cloud is accessibility of data. Virtualization and public clouds are an enabler for SaaS. You now have more ways to access it as your data has left the "sacred corporate premises".

Previously IT Team would harp about security and prevent any form of access from outside. However that stiffled innovation and productivity of the employees.

If you had ensured your business critical functions (applications) were made more accessible, maybe with lesser rules, using other technologies, the up take of SaaS could have slowed down. This could have given the IT Team more headaches. But headaches create work :-)

Steve Jobs: Learnings

2011-10-13T10:01:00.000+05:30

Lots of praise has been showered about, how Steve Jobs was great in building insanely cool products like the iPad, iPhone and iPod.

However there may have been a greater strategy there. He may have had a vision of accessibility of data for consumers. It was about data all the way.

At many popular points of human interaction like listening to music, the way we work, entertainment, he dropped gems on the way. Gems like iphone, ipad, apple TV, iTunes.

He has then set up Apple to continue making data accessible via iCloud. To complete his actual vision?

Steve Jobs : Rest in peace.

What is DevOps - a short note

2011-09-27T13:40:00.000+05:30

DevOps is heard quite often now. I will try to give my perspective.

Application management teams are normally the bridge between development and operations. To help the technology stack developed by the development team to be utilized to its optimum extent in production, there must be collaboration. This is facilitated by development team using APIs and instrumenting the applications with application specific metrics that relate closely with the actual functioning of the hosted application.

For example, just saying CPU Utilization is high does not mean much in an application context. However telling there is a surge in number of purchases via the shopping cart right now and that is causing abnormally high utilization, means a lot. This "application specific input" means a lot for operations. Getting this kind of collaboration going is DevOps for me :-)

An IT Management product could help the development team integrate these business metrics in to the same Operations Dashboards that your NOC will use. The development team would ideally use programming languages like Java, .Net, Python etc. or protocols like JMX, WMI and SNMP to communicate with the management tool.

Identifying new Products in the SaaS Model

2011-08-22T13:01:00.000+05:30

In the on-premise world, first came point products. This had success as a specific problem was solved very well. Lower price points. Tactical sale (eg. sell to engineer vs sell to CIO). Less noise in the GUI.

Then came integrated suites and bloatware :-)

In the On-Demand world, follow the same strategy. Do point products first. But do it on a platform that can bring all of it together in to one GUI, in future. Or follow the less is more strategy.

Partner engagement from a non-financial standpoint

2011-06-20T19:40:00.003+05:30

Managing the partner channel is hard, especially if you are a technology company. The time needed and the slow pace to build lasting relationships need special focus and is normally not your strong point.

When signing up partners, first thing to realize is you are not signing up just the CEO of the company. You are expecting his sales to chime-in for you. So help her. That means, signing up a partner is just the first step. Make sure you help train her team and provide all support they need to keep them productive.
You got to even ensure high mind share within their sales team about your company.
That could of course mean anything from cheap tactics to well meaning and useful things like sending brochures about product, news updates, conduct regular trainings and provide outstanding support.

Outstanding support!

Based on the location of your partner, you need to be accessible to them, when ever or using whatever medium. That means, be accessible via phone, email, chat or in-person. A single point of contact is invaluable.
Markets are complex. Some things work well in some markets and some things don't. However make sure the best practices of one market gets shared to other markets seamlessly via your partner portal. That brings us to the topic of communication.

Your partner portal must rock!

The partner portal should share news about the product obviously, but more importantly about product sales triggers (eg. government legislation like Italian Privacy Regulation) in your other partner countries and be the single source of the truth for your partners.

BMC acquires Cordiant for End user Experience Management

2011-04-29T12:55:00.000+05:30

BMC acquires Cordiant for ~ $125 million for their End user Experience Management capabilities.

http://www.bmc.com/news/press-releases/2011/BMC-Software-Acquires-Coradiant-Inc.html

What is Cloud Computing ?

2011-04-08T15:36:00.000+05:30

Cloud computing is all about the maturity to allow your core data to leave the immediate boundaries of where the data is generated and consumed. Its about the data. Its about the processing environment. Cloud computing is not just SaaS or Amazon or about Azure etc. Those are the ways to implement it.

@NY and SFO for the ManageEngine User Conference

2011-03-17T23:48:00.000+05:30

I have got the opportunity to present the ManageEngine Product Roadmap, at the ManageEngine User Conference.

NewYork
March 22-23, 2011
The Park Central Hotel,
870 Seventh Avenue at 57th Street,
New York, NY 10019,
www.parkcentralny.com

San Francisco:
March 29-30, 2011

The Marriott Courtyard – Downtown,
299 Second Street,
San Francisco, CA 94105,
415.947.0700,
www.courtyardsanfrancisco.com

Check out the user conference website for details.

How To Kill Innovation, SVPG Blog, Six Sigma?

2011-01-31T11:03:00.001+05:30

A few years back, I had the opportunity to be in one of the workshops conducted by Marty. Here is a good write up about how Six Sigma could stifle innovation. Especially in IT Companies.

Last week I ran into two different software technology companies (neither in Silicon Valley) that had just recently brought in Six Sigma consultants. This caught me by surprise because it¹s been a very long time since I heard of a technology company even considering this. I'm hoping this was an anomaly, but in the spirit of "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," I thought it's important to discuss quality-centric methodologies like Six Sigma.

In the manufacturing world especially, if your company is struggling with quality or cost issues, then Six Sigma can be very appropriate. It is based on a set of quality management techniques and practices that can significantly reduce costs and defect rates.

Unfortunately, many of those that advocate Six Sigma believe that the principles should be applied throughout the organization, for virtually any business process. But what can be good for removing defects in a manufacturing process can completely destroy the product discovery process and software development.

Please know that I am dead serious when I say this: for companies that depend on innovation, these well-intentioned but misguided people can destroy your company.

In our industry, we live and die by our ability to innovate. Yes, quality is important, but it's only interesting to even discuss quality if you've come up with a product people want.

Do you remember the old Motorola, the company that used to be "driven by a passion to invent?" How about 3M, the company that was based on encouraging initiative and innovation among its employees? And GE, the company that really did used to "bring big ideas to life." And Sun, at one point they were incredibly creative and relevant. Same with Intuit, a company that was founded on a commitment to delight customers.

What all these companies have in common is that they all used to be widely admired, consistent technology innovators. Until Six Sigma took over. Then their innovation virtually disappeared. It all became minor incremental refinements, and in our business, that'll only take you so far.

Now of course the intent of Six Sigma was never to kill or stifle innovation, but the unintended negative consequences to an organization of trying to apply Six Sigma dogma beyond the processes it is appropriate for are so profoundly damaging that they dwarf the benefits, especially over time. Yes, you can save some costs in the short-run, but you'll soon start to see the consequences in the top-line as significant new product introductions slow to a crawl, and customer reactions to your products disappoint.

Visit a technology product team in a Six Sigma company and you'll find people that have had the creativity and initiative drained right out of them. It's all about avoiding the bureaucracy and the pain associated with any deviation. And it's no surprise that they've had a hard time retaining the creative people the ones they need to invent their future successful products.

For tech companies, it's just not about eliminating defects and inefficiencies. It's about discovering and delivering products and services that customers love. Don't fall into the trap of confusing building the product right, with building the right product.

If your goal is to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, then maybe Six Sigma is for you, but if your goal is to create winning products, you need to optimize your organization instead around product discovery and encouraging just the sort of creativity and initiative that enables people to think and act differently.

It's not just Six Sigma consultants that can try to apply their techniques to areas that don't make any sense. I¹ve also seen some overzealous Scrum advocates try to apply the process to areas that it wasn't designed for and make a mess out of things as well. But honestly I¹ve never seen damage to a company's ability to innovate as deep and lasting as what has happened to companies that try to implement Six Sigma from the top down.

So if you find one of these Six Sigma guys wandering the halls of your tech company, grab them by their black belt and toss them back where they came from.

http://www.svpg.com/how-to-kill-innovation/

JSR for Java 7 and Java 8 approved ! :-(

2010-12-16T16:02:00.004+05:30

Here is a good article covering the mood of the JCP process. Apache and Google voted NO. Others complained and voted YES. It looks gloomy thinking what Oracle is going to do to Java. Its time to learn the next programming language Python or Ruby guys and gals.

Oracle tinkering with the Java licensing could mean many companies will think twice before using Java going forward. Atleast ISVs, as the majority do not wants to pay Oracle for the application server JVM and the database. Oracle Database is just great.... Otherwise it is like getting charged an arm and a leg:-)

This along with the nature of today's programming being more of building Web Applications, brings other compelling reasons on why users need to learn other programming languages. Ruby (Ruby On Rails) or Python could be good options to shift to. The new generation programming languages bring in more cool features (that improve developer productivity) that are lacking in Java.

Richness Vs Simplicity in Products

2010-12-06T11:05:00.001+05:30

Richness is a great feature for your product. If your product is rich in capabilities, then it will have all the options 90% of users will ever need. However you may end up building a product (say user interface) that is hard to use, because of the plethora of options you have added.

Simple products have lesser features. It will be just good enough for many, to derive a business case out of it. It can sell better on its own, without much training. This is great if your goal is to just enjoy the journey of building products.

While building products you can decide whether you want to tilt towards richness or simplicity of the product.

If your goal is to sell software with no fuss, no sales people, then, "Less is more" may be a good strategy.

Companies may choose to keep products simple so that they can reduce support and training cost and enjoy the fruits of higher productivity in their organizations.

Scala an alternative to Java for programming

2010-11-29T18:56:00.005+05:30

Scala as an alternative programming language looks credible.

Being a Java programmer, my summary is going to be more from that perspective. Java developers could look at it as a replacement for "javac" or in simpler words, a new ".java File parser" for Java which supports a new Programming style. Of-course there are scala (Java) classes /APIs to support that. It finally generates Java code and byte code ! That's similar to what JRuby or groovy does. It runs on the JVM.

Hence it could look like a language created to solve the top X problems perceived in Java from a programmer productivity point of view, rather than a language built from the ground up from a performance / stability standpoint. That is fine as long as it is done well, overall. As a matter of fact, it could make sense, as the Java strength is the maturity of the JVM.

Another way to look at Scala is something that Java itself did not do till date. Making more intelligent use of the compile time knowledge. It would be great if Oracle could bring this to the table. Another main capability is Scala bringing in more previously framework features right in to the programming language.

Some cool stuff : Lots of stuff that could be done in Java itself in compile time has been done.

- Primitives treat very very large objects the same way as smaller types. [Java fuss] Why have BIGINTEGER class for it ? Make it as simple as handling int values.
- maps contain a - calling a method in operator notation : In Scala everything is a function. Including operators. At-least that's what they want us to believe.
- Lots of smart compiler time gimmicks like the "Conversion Method" eg. he talks about that avoids an extra public static method call to create a Wrapper Object just for compilation sakes. This can reduce calls to Integer.parseInt.... It works by picking up just one resolving identifier from scope. if more present, it gives error.
- Using three "=" sign is a new syntax introduced for assertions. Eg. assert (result === 17)
- Usage of triple quotes to insert CSS etc are good syntactical makeup.
- Everything is a method. so =, +, == etc are also treated as methods.
- Duck typing : is the ability to call methods of another class, with the same method structure of a class, even though they have no common super object. Same method structure eg. getLength method in MyOwnClass.java and Array.java can be called by a parent method easily.
- Scala's additional features will reduce the need for tools outside of the language (eg. Spring Framework) and this will help programs become more maintainable.
- You can use all the Java APIs inside Scala as its finally generating Java Code. Hence you still have the capability to use all Java APIs out there, inside Scala. No re-inventing the wheel.

Anecdote :
Of course there are arguments that, many of the design patterns spread by the gang of four were actually programming language constructs and not patterns.

Some of the things that make me feel a bit edgy are :

a) It still uses the JVM. Hence we still run the same risk from a licensing perspective (from Oracle).
b) Not sure if it is mature enough for projects that run for over five years with medium sized teams. I stress on this as I have seen that Java as a programming language is very useful in this case as it reduces the effort to make changes or introduce changes. This is something I feel a company like us should really worry about long term. Writing "Hello World" programs are not enough. For eg. imagine the flexibility of "threadlocal" as a simple concept that allows SAS magic on any mickey based products etc.. Programming platforms should support that level of "insight" built in.

c) Debugging will look odd : The runti me is as stable as the JVM, as its finally byte code. The fact that your code will be called by a wrapping Java class will make it feel odd. For peculiar errors, you may actually go to the Scala generated Java files. Look at it like, sometimes we go to the generated .java Servlet file when trying to debug a peculiar problem in the JSP.

d) Being a Wrapper around normal Java code means that it is not superior than Java performance, but could still strive to be better than other programming languages like Ruby or python from a performance standpoint.

Anecdote :
Nearly all languages first bootstrap the new language in some existing language, and then rewrite the compiler in the new language they create. So Scala is written in Scala and Javac in Java.

References : Video on Scala named "The Feel Of Scala" by Bill Venners. Bill Venners is a very credible Java guy (Artima fame), great presentation style.

Product Objective

2010-11-02T19:48:00.000+05:30

We must categorize a product objective clearly. There is a diff between an Add On for a product, Add On Product and a Standalone Product.

Add Ons help complement your overall Product portfolio. "Add On Products" help complement the overall "Corporate Product Strategy". That is, they complement the standalone products.

Standalone Products need to have the depth that helps it sell on its own. These Standalone products are more strategic. These main stay products could be the platform on which the other categories of products revolve.

For Add On Products, Less is More works just fine. Some products are meant to be Add On products. Identify and mark them early.

Add On Products help sell more of the Standalone Product. They are sometimes more of a checklist item, and does not need too much depth in capabilities. These checkbox services could also be capabilities that help market the core offerings and reduce the actual cost of brand building and market acquisition.

Innovation

2010-10-12T10:44:00.002+05:30

Innovation does not mean implementing what the world has never seen. Innovation includes making changes in the way you do work today. Implementing what others may have already done, but integrating it, in your work life, for the better.

Atleast trying to.

Good quote by Oracle President, Safra Catz

2010-09-23T20:25:00.001+05:30

The below is a quote made by Oracle President, Safra Catz, when Mark Hurd joined Oracle, after quitting, HP.

"..As Oracle continues to grow we need people experienced in operating a $100 billion business..."

People win a lottery not because they deserve it. They win it because they just happened to have bought the winning ticket or have bought enough of it to increase probability to win. Unless its a lottery win kind of success they are hoping for, companies targeting high growth, need to have maturing thought process and people, to outgrow their current size.

Less is more. What does it mean ?

2010-09-13T13:07:00.002+05:30

Here is my take on what "Less is More" means.

Some 3-5 years back I did a study on how the web analytics market was shaping up and whether there was space for newer vendors targeting the SMB space. I had concluded that it was a market which was very hard for a new ISV to compete in. This was mainly due to the presence of Google Analytics. At that time itself, they were giving it away for free, to websites up to 5 million pageviews per month ! Google Analytics has tons of capabilities. Similarly there were others (like Microsoft etc) that were threatening to do the same as Google.

Now in 2010, looking back at new vendors like CrazyEgg in this space, it looks like there could have been space. I think CrazyEgg has done what I feel is actually "Less is more".

The service gives you just enough actionable data. Very light and simple to use.

Does that mean, less is more or "Less is Enough" for some ?

Kitten. Cat. Turning in to a tiger?

2010-07-09T20:40:00.001+05:30

John has a tea shop on Gold Street. He sells only tea. His most popular drink is the Chinese Green tea. Selling Chinese tea helped him grow from $1,000 profit to over $8,000 a month. It also helped him introduce comfortable sofas and antique furniture, just to sip tea. His business is flourishing.

Just down the road, there is an ex-serviceman, Bill, selling coffee, tea and all sorts of things. However Bill does have something that sells really well. Australian cookies. As a matter of fact, selling cookies gets him a lot more profit than anything else. Bill also sells green tea and strangely almost 30% of people buying green tea buys these cookies!

The talk of the town is that both John and Bill make nourishing green tea.

Now John could learn to make cookies and possibly eat in to Bill's business. How can Bill the ex-serviceman survive on the long run?

Well Bill can make it hard for John, by dropping prices for Green Tea and attract more people to his shop. This would put pressure on John to reduce prices. This would make it harder for him to bootstrap his business and possibly diversifying in to Bill's business. On the short run it may reduce revenues for Bill, but not necessarily as Bill may be selling more cookies now.

Can John try the same strategy ? Yes, if can take the risk to hire a good Australian baker. Well Bill better take care before that happens.

Who will Oracle acquire next ?

2010-01-13T15:26:00.006+05:30

If you see the acquisitions by Oracle in the last 5 years, they have done upto $10 billion dollar acquisitions every year. Last year was Sun Micro Systems at around $7.4 billion. What will Oracle acquire this year ? Here is my take.

Oracle will acquire VMWare ($1.8 billion revenue) or Citrix ($1.5 billion revenue). The chances are high that it will be VMWare.

Maybe I am trivializing acquisitions.

But I would also not be surprised if VMWare acquires PostgreSQL in the next 1 to 2 years, and Oracle acquiring VMWare after that for around $10 billion. I got that thought as Sun did the same favor for Oracle by acquiring MySQL.

Now, why VMWare ? Two reasons.

Oracle is trying to accelerate its capabilities in the IT Operations space. VMWare is a very interesting company by suddenly being the champion facilitating data center consolidation. VMWare has also shown that they are interested in open source - Spring framework > Hyperic etc.

Hence VMWare incidentally acquiring PostgreSQL does not seem to be a bad idea. This way Postgres also comes to Oracle "accidentally". Remember they have acquired Siebel and PeopleSoft and J D Edwards (indirectly) too and PostgreSQL should be next. It now becomes more compelling and "convenient" for Oracle to acquire VMWare (and PostgreSQL).

For VMWare too this could make sense. It will help VMWare fight Microsoft and Citrix in the virtualization space better when its along with Oracle.

One more company that can challenge Windows Server Dominance ?
What if you can run specific applications directly on the Virtual machine ? What if the Sun's GuestVM becomes a reality ? Now that, it is with Oracle. Or if the Oracle BEA's LiquidVM for WebLogic goes real aggressive and makes it available for any Java Application ? (old news) This could allow the Java VM to run directly on the VMware hypervisor, without the need for an OS like Windows or Linux !

Now can this kind of direct deployment of Application Platforms hurt the Windows Server market itself ?

Well interesting game changing options ahead.

Update on Dec 10, 2010 : I think there are a few more signs that Oracle will try to acquire VMWare. Salesforce acquires Heroku. Just a few month back SalesForce and VMWare were cosing on VMForce. Now, here is another big acquisition in the PAAS space by SalesForce. Of course Oracle and Salesforce may not go well with each other.

Open Source Projects can complement your marketing

2010-01-04T14:36:00.001+05:30

That's a complement to the market reach & power of popular Open Source projects. Confluence a SaaS enterprise wiki from Atlassian has reached 70% of enterprises ! IBATIS (open source Java/ .NET persistence framework), AppFuse etc and surely 100s of others use Confluence for their open source community documents(via their WIKI). The traffic that gets generated is probably one of the best brand building exercises for Confluence. 37signals built a cult like following for basecamp. Interestingly, however, no prizes for guessing who is behind the Ruby on Rails. Open source community can help your marketing efforts by getting the traffic to the SaaS service you provide. Its a win win if you give it fully free for these projects.

Taste your own dog food Vs Eat your own dog food

2009-12-17T18:36:00.001+05:30

ISVs need to build products that customers are willing to pay for. In the process, if you can use it, there is nothing like it. However, if you are a large ISV, and if your dog food is half baked, pushing it to your whole organization will be counterproductive. Select teams capable of giving useful feedback and then standardize on it.
In short, first taste your own dog food before rushing to eat it.

Windows command line tools for simple network troubleshooting

2009-11-21T15:43:00.004+05:30

Here are some basic windows command line tools for simple network troubleshooting for PCs. http://commandwindows.com/tcpiputil.htm nslookup ipconfig netstat netsh

Update: this was supposed to go to my personal blog else where. But the convenience of sending an email to make a blog post resulted in me erroneously posting it here. Talk about updates for business critical functions vs twitter updates !

Fastest SaaS brand

2009-11-17T14:23:00.001+05:30

All SaaS services would love to see their web applications load as fast as, Google Search Engine. You rarely see Google.com taking greater than 0.1 ms to return their search results.

Now how do you make your brand be associated to something very critical for all SaaS Apps out there. Speed?

I have used a variety of services from Google : Search, GMail, Analytics, AdWords, Web master tools etc. But out of all those I have felt Google Search the fastest. And that is the most frequently used service for me.

At times I have felt AdWords is not a Google service as it used to be slow. Even though I have felt that, I would still tell anyone Google (as a company) is the fastest Web App on the planet !

Is there a lesson there? Maybe.

Make sure your most popular service does not run out of steam to deliver good web page response time. In other words make sure your most popular service is lightning fast. As fast as Google ! That will give a positive influence to your overall SaaS strategy.

Forrester Vs Gartner Research Firms a Comparison

2009-09-13T13:41:00.005+05:30

Analyst firms are quite popular among enterprises to help them decide what is best for thier companies. Large ISVs who want to influence the CIO or CEO too get involved with analyst firms to show thought leadership and be seen in front of these busy C Segment folks.

Analyst firms help in

1) They help enterprises purchase the right software. Well I am sure if your budget is small, you are not going to go to these analyst firms for advice. To get started the "Big 4" analyst firms start at $30K per year.
2) Save time
3) For an ISV, they help validate the message or conclusion you made.
4) They are like a paid "market analyst" for your company. If you think you find it worthwhile to hire someone and pay 100K per year to do this job, then it could be worth the time in investing in one firm.
5) BTW they do not give actionable data. They give you stats and you have to make the decision, hence in addition to the docs they give, you must have someone still to work and make decisions on that data.

Some analyst firms price their products (base products) based on the number of persons who can access their web site and documentation. Additionally they will have some docs that are readable only on paying more. For eg: the dataquest documents from Gartner.

This is a simple (shallow) comparison on how a few leading analyst firms (Gartner and Forrester) compare against each other. I was not able to find any good content in this space and hence wanted to express as neutral an opinion as possible. Hope this will be useful to "Analyst Relations" personnel in enterprises and ISVs to make a decision. This is based on my experience with them for over 3 years.

Document Content for similarly priced services Rating out of 10.
Gartner : 7/10
Forrester: 7.5 /10 (extra because some of their docs give numbers and that is extra payment for Gartner)
Comments :Forrester seems to be better for ISVs / Vendors, while Gartner is better for Enterprises trying to purchase. So I found Forrester a bit better as my usage was more from an ISV point of view

Advanced Docs
Gartner: can't rate as I did not have access to too many docs. But they are of great quality.
Forrester: good. and they do not seem to have segregation of document access itself.

Usefulness of Analyst Inquiry
Gartner:Will say what they hear from customers. Not much messaging / consulting works, I guess that must be available at extra cost.
Forrester:Will say what they hear from customers. They will push you to go for messaging / consulting works by extra dollars.
Comments:In this aspect, Forrester is not that good. They expect us to use the "Service Units" $$ and tell the analyst about our product. However for Gartner we can use our existing "Unlimited Inquiry" option itself.

Flexibility of Analyst Inquiry meaning can a non member do the call
Gartner:Yes (they have an option ask another person for this call only option)
Forrester:No. They also say they are strict about this. But on a case to case basis the account manager may allow others to talk so that when its time to renew, they can entice you to upgrade your licenses.
Comments:Normally for Gartner the Licensed user will have to email them but a non member can do the talking on the call.
So I find Gartner very useful in this case. However if you are having too many calls, you may want to go for the additional user license.

Analyst Friendliness
Gartner:8/10
Forrester:7.5/10
Comments:i think this is based on the analyst you talk to. If you consistently talk to them and keep them updated, you get better mileage.

Amount of Content Written
Gartner:Low. Both have high amount of new content written.
Comments:However since Gartner is probably in the market longer, the established markets have very less new content being written and hence you get less coverage in new documents, since there are fewer written for established markets.
For example, APM, Network monitoring are established markets and they do not write anything - no Magic Quadrant.
However for a market like Network Change Management, which is an upcoming one, there are chances newer vendors could get mentioned.
Forrester:Medium. They write lot of content even for established market segments and hence probability of getting mentioned is higher.
Comments: Unless they write we can't be mentioned in any good doc :-)

Any USPs
Gartner:They are more focused on End User / Customers not on ISVs. Their reports are more useful for our customers than for us to understand the competitive space.
Forrester:They seem to have lots of content which looks specifically done to help ISVs or Vendors to understand the competitive space. Comments:They have both ISVs or Vendors and Enterprises as clients. So hence I thought of highlighting this.

Account Manager:
Gartner: mixed. However calls were still scheduled via their call center easily.
Forrester:mixed initially. but we definitely had a better experience with Forrester. Excellent and enticed us to spend more than we would have otherwise.

Cost
Gartner:Starting prices in both range at approx the same limit. 30K
Forrester:Starting prices in both range at approx the same limit. 30K
Comments:this is the case when you have doc access and inquiry with unlimited analyst option.

Free Vendor Briefings Possible
Gartner:Yes - 1 hour -
Forrester:Yes - 1 hour -
Comments:This is something present in all analyst firms. this is normally one way and you cannot ask anything, you answer them. Normally this is for any new product releases, major product upgrades etc. So can do more often too and you DONOT have to be a client to do it.

Will they try their best to make your usage successful ?
Gartner:I guess this depends on how good your account manager is. I have had mixed results.
Forrester:They are excellent and even point to other analysts whose full time job is educating "Analyst Relations" persons.

Will they cover you and are they independent ?
Gartner:They are surely very independent. They have strict standards on how they cover vendors. So if you are a small vendor, you may simply not be able to meet their standards. Which is ok as they set the expectations clearly.
Forrester:No comments. May not be so strict in approach of covering.
Comments:For some analyst firms you have to use Service Units (costs money) to make sure that analysts know about you well.

Is it easy to do briefings ?
Gartner:Very Easy and Really professional internal IT. You can do it over the phone in less than 20 minutes. I like their email option the best.
Forrester:Can't match Gartner. They are sometimes too slow to respond unless you copy the account manager always, which is sometimes an overhead. EMail is very bad, however I have not tried their phone option.

Tidbits
Gartner:
Forrester:Even people in Forrester look up at Gartner as a great analyst firm. Gartner has many analysts covering specific areas where Forrester may only have one and some of them covering more than one area.
Comments:All analyst firms have excellent analysts as they are all very experienced. If you have tons of money, go for both.

To make your analyst relations program more effective, make sure you have one dedicated person in the first year to work with the analysts. This gives maximum mileage for what you are spending. If you cannot dedicate 70% of one person's time on this, you may not be utilizing to the max potential. Note, you are spending a lot, so unless you can back yourself, do not spend.

Also make it a point to do a self review how you perform and how much of their services you use every quarter. Try to improvise on the previous quarter. If you do well with one, then go for the second one in the second or third year.

Please note the disclaimer of my blog.

Keeping Secrets

2009-08-13T21:11:00.002+05:30

How many times have you ended up publishing a price sheet you did not intend, to be available to your channel ? We have seen this all too often that unintentional leaks do happen. This is especially true when you are releasing a new product. The bad is you may change pricing models at the last minute too and all that explaining may be a bit hard.

Here is one suggestion on how to keep it a secret. Do not create one.

Unless you really created a Price Sheet or a document it does not have to be hidden. That is one public goof up avoided :-)

Since it is much easier to create a price sheet than releasing a product on time, .. keep it a secret.

My Son, My Appraising Manager and Project Management

2009-06-29T09:51:00.001+05:30

I am very fond of my son. Who is not :-) Well, being too fond of them may lead you to irritate them too. When my wife and I sit together for a chat along with my son (just 3 years now), I observed one interesting thing. He always goes and sits next to my wife more than me. I am not jealous btw, honest. He comes to me but moves away faster than probably he wants to. This made me think. I later realized that I was probably irritating him by cuddling him and not letting him set the agenda :-) Later I stopped doing that and did not even look at what he was doing. Hey, now I found that he increased the average time spent "near" me.

Now 7 to 9 year back I had a comment from my first appraising manager. I asked what is your feedback about my performance and his reply was, I do not have much feedback, you are doing just fine. I do not want to give feedback and disturb your rhythm. Well I am happy for that.

Got the relationship with Project Management ? If a team is doing well, do not change the working equations. Its very hard to get a set of people to work together on the long run. If the team is doing well, and there are big plans for the long term, then do not tinker with the team. Just let the Project Manager function with independence.

updates for business critical functions vs twitter updates

2009-06-22T14:19:00.009+05:30

I have observed many times people are able to make twitter updates with amazing regularity. Stress here is on "regularity" not quantity. But I have seen others who always have an excuse of not having "time" to keep the CRM updated.

Or to put it in another way, it has been hard to make the team do a "business critical" function like keeping the "sales CRM updated" when compared with a "socializing" function like writing personal comments on twitter !

What makes this possible ? I am sure employees mean well. So ...

Well twitter has twitterfox that makes tweeting a breeze. I guess the main reason for this lack of enthusiasm among employees to update a "business critical" function is lack of usable interfaces or in other words the drudgery of existing mechanisms.

So reduce this drudgery and make them more productive by giving them cool widgets and interfaces to your million dollar CRM investments.

Jopr platform for building management applications and RHQ Project

2009-05-02T15:13:00.001+05:30

I just stumbled upon Jopr recently and realized it is the opensource version of the JBoss Operations Network - Platform. That could mean any one trying to build a management platform (monitoring applications / servers) say for JBoss itself or other applications could use Jopr to start with. Definition of Jopr from their website : Jopr (pronounced "jopper") is the open source enterprise management solution for the JBoss Middleware projects. This management project delivers an open source and unsupported form of the JBoss Operations Network product. It provides enterprise administration and monitoring with fine-grained security and an extensible platform base upon which extensions and new administration support can be built. This system is based on and plugin-compatible with the multi-vendor RHQ management project Interesting multi vendor project - RHQ, though collaboratively developed by RedHat and Hyperic. Looks like opensouce community feeds in to RHQ while RedHat and Hyperic sells it commercially in another name. Or did i miss something ?

Software targeted at the SMB Market ?

2009-02-06T14:32:00.004+05:30

IT Management software products that are generic have lesser people accepting it than products that are targeting a niche space.

Explaing more about above stmt ...

Then answer why - because of maturity of IT org. Ask your sales force why their people do not keep their sf updated ? laziness / lack of process ? Same way complex software will not be used in an organization, even if they are free

What is SaaS for the Big 4 of IT Operations ?

2009-01-29T12:56:00.006+05:30

For all of the last 20 years, the Big 4 have dominated the Enterprise IT Management market. They have contributed a lot to the innovation with the level of engagement they had with customers and end users. However a lot of these learnings have become best practices and common knowledge and the barrier to entry of new players have reduced.

However these organisations itself have not evolved with the times and stick to the high cost business model where consultants and marketing teams still play a major role in winning and maintaing customers.

Now with the slow but sure evolution of Software to move as a Service (SaaS), these IT Management vendors are finding it hard to adopt and move towards a SaaS model for delivering IT Management. The biggest challenge for these vendors seem to be :

1) Technology
2) Business Model

Technology Challenge:
The biggest challenge from the technology point of view is their agent based approach to monitoring and the product Client (GUI). Most of the software they use is an agentbased model, which had its benefits in the early days when packaged applications did not have a management instrumentation of its own. Another technology challenge is their outdated Client Interface. They also have to work on a web client to make it work for a SaaS model.

The technology part is probably something they can overcome over a period of time, but ofcourse they have the risks associated with rewriting software code.

The biggest challenge for them is changing the Business Model.

Having being addicated to getting 6 and 7 digit software license revenue , they will find it hard to move to the norm that is come to be seen in the SaaS model - Subscription based pricing. Subscription based pricing involves getting license cost per year and more predominantly on a monthly basis.

The bigger problem is for those who are Public Companies. They can't afford to show a lower revenue for a quarter, let alone for a whole year due to shareholder pressure. This is the case even though it is clear that Subscription model prices even out on the long run.

The movement of applications to the cloud is sure. The dominance of the Big 4 in the past is an established fact. However the emergence of a Smart Fifth is also a possibility;

..... unless the Big 4 and other vendors are willing to be more agile.

Reasons why Subscription Model Pricing is Better than Perpetual Model

2009-01-29T12:53:00.005+05:30

Is Subscription Model Pricing is Better than Perpetual Model ? Well I am sure we can argue it either way, but let me give probably some non-obvious reasons why Subscription is better.

Well before that let me define what each is. Subscription Model Pricing is where you charge the customer a specific amount for using your services or product every year or month. In SaaS Services monthly billing ius very common.

Perpetual License Model or "License Model" usually default Licnesing Type and more popular one in traditional software, is where you pay one time for using the software and never have to pay again. This normally does not entitle you for upgrades and support. That comes as an additional.

It is common to have a formula like
Perpetual Model Price = 2.5 Times Subscription Prices + 20% Annual Maintenance & Support

Now what are the not so obvious benefits of Subscription Model ?

1)If you are a product company, by embracing a Subscription Model, you are making yourself ready for the movement to Software as a Service. Normally in a SaaS model, Services are offered in the Subscription Model as seen in Zoho and other services.

2) Since customers pay you monthly, renewals or "subscription money" will bring in a more steady revenue stream in the long term.

3) Since you are paid only monthly or yearly, you do not get access to the whole loot in one go :-) You tighten your spending in the begining itself and hence will eventually have a better run business. This is because lesser money comes upfront and it gives you that discipline in keeping expenses in check.

4) You make a more useful service. You earn the renewal money by making your customer happy. This is really critical as when you see users dropping off, you know your service is lacking. You can take immediate action. This added advantage helps you creating a better product in the end.

Code Rewrite : why it is bad ?

2009-01-29T12:49:00.006+05:30

Well what is code rewrite ? It is a strategic decision to scrap all code you have ever written for a software product and rewrite it from scratch, thinking that will give you better quality code & will be easy to maintain.

Stay away from rewriting a whole code base thinking the old one is terrible.

I have personally seen that being a bad decision many times. Joel on software has very interesting real stories to tell here.

Why it is bad ? Here are some reasons I have felt -

1) Lots of developer effort going down the drain.
The old code base say it was 3 to 5 years old has had lots of development effort already go in. Notwithstanding while writing the new code base do you have better developers and designers than what you had previously ? Otherwise you could end up with a code that may no seem readable and hence maintainable but not really superior.

2) Quality Assurance person's time. Your QAs would have already done lots of testing. Now, to get back a fresh piece of code to that quality is not a simple task. Have you documented all test cases / use cases ?

Fresh Code to reach the quality of Old code with all Use Cases handled will take time.

3) What about the hundreds of invaluable testing already done by customers ! Think about it. There are lots of customer environment specific issues. How did you fix it or what was the fix ? Can you reproduce that in your labs and support it ? BTW those 100s of small enhancements took that extra week each to support.

4) If you are going to maintain the old one too, then its going to be a bigger nightmare because you are going to distribute your work on 2 code bases. That is going to slow you down.

5) Remember Customers do not buy your software after reading your code. But they want the software to work, otherwise they are going to complain. Complain real loud.

6) When you rewrite code, cultutrally people expect a better featured product from what was previously present. Most people comment on the GUI as that's all they really see. Now these expectations futhur increase the time taken to go to market.

Ofcourse code rewrite for a small piece of software is absolutely fine. The above post is more from a perspective where there is a major rewrite from scratch of a full software product maybe which had over 500 man years of development effort.

So what should I do when I have feel there is a need to rewrite code ? Well Follow the 80 - 20 rule. Most probably 80% of the problems are caused by 20% of the code. Even here first identify the problematic code and be very straight to the point on how you fix. Do only Design fixing where it is absolutely needed. Fix only the flow problems or the design problems - meaning creating interfaces, and deciding on the right approach etc and donot take up anything that does not need to be touched. Do not evaluate new frameworks especially for DB persistence etc. Also look at the revision history. If the code has not been touched for years, then you may not have to even change it as it is actually working.

To summarize I guess code rewrite is bad especially for large projects. The main reason being the difficulty to get the new code to reach the quality and richness as the old.

About this blog

2009-01-29T12:48:00.002+05:30

This blog is going to talk mainly about Performance Management, Product Management, SaaS, Application Performance Management, Business Service Management and other interesting things that I come across.

Please note this is a personal blog and the content I write in this blog does not represent the company I work for.