Good quote by Oracle President, Safra Catz

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 ?

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?

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 ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.