Lost In The Chasm Part 3: Press The Button

  by Richard Muirhead | 03 Aug 2008 | Permalink |

In my last two blogs we explored some hot trends and challenges facing us as we work to build a new market, as well as today’s Technology Adoption Lifecycle (TALC) and the ever growing importance of customer intimacy. Let’s now tie it together by using some totally fictitious and random ☺ examples of particular segments or applications:-

Value Proposition - TALC Stage
IT Management Metrics – Early Adopters
Standardization& Compliance – Early Adopters
Model Driven Change Control – Early Adopters
Data Centre Moves with VARs/SIs – Chasm/Bowling Alley
Data Centre Optimization with VARs – Bowling Alley
Data Centre Software License Intel for License Optimisation – Bowling Alley
Service Maps for BSM – Bowling Alley/Tornado
Service Maps for CMDB – Chasm/Bowling Alley

Market positioning can hinder as much as it helps. People may only know what you might have gone to great pains to tell them, but once you’ve told them it’s hard to change their minds.
Every self-respecting software entrepreneur yearns to be a category-defining gorilla. Irritatingly, category definition is only part of the story; the gorilla only emerges once the category has not only been defined but also built by the updrafts of the buying frenzy in the tornado…and hence there are many categories that were defined but not built. So if your product, people and importantly…your positioning can stretch to it…then you may want or need to coopt one that looks like it is going to take off.

Our category is all about making IT management more informed; more holistic and proactive. In short it is about rolling out a new and integrated data platform for IT organizations. For this to succeed a number of innovators must focus on their preferred segment within the bowling alley and concentrate on winning the pragmatist customers they contain until they have been anointed market leaders…but only for that segment.. This process will continue until sufficient segments have been satisfied; and the segment specific capabilities of the innovators have converged such that the New IT Data Platform can be declared a single category.

I would argue that BSM, ADM and CMDB were defined but have yet to be fully built. “IT Intelligence” or “IT Data Platform” or “IT Search” is now being defined and has a real chance of growing into a category capable of driving the dysfunctionality out of IT operations. Now that would be cool.

In summary, we are working hard to do the industry (and yes, ourselves) a favour by shedding light on the inner workings of the increasingly critical data centers of the world. This is a big task…and getting people to change their ways is tough. But if we can get to know them well enough to press their button; if we can make them more competitive; and quickly deliver them “Speed of Advantage,” there will be a golden market opportunity for a number of today’s innovators.