Whereas “Content Management” (ECM, WCM, portal) software business is, at least so far, mainly (of course not exclusively) driven by North American or European companies, the strong potential of emerging markets such as Brazil, India (I mean for its local market), China or others look very obvious to all.

Wikipedia is classifying the markets in two kinds: the Newly Industrialized countries, and the Developing countries. I found these definitions arguable. E.g., Argentina was the 2^nd richest country in 1945, so not exactly a “Developping Country” but anyway, whatever the definition, they are all emerging markets.

And these countries are never the last ones to innovate, so we could expect much more in a near future. Some open source or not open source vendors have been recently quite successful and much more are likely to grow up there. That said, and as already mentioned by John Newton, or others, the fast growing economies don’t look so bright for the traditional software business or at least, far less from what it should. E.g., read page 9 about ECM licence for Open Text in FY Q1 2010 (ends 30/09/09) here (“[ECM Licence] was down […] a little bit in Australia and Asia-Pac a little bit.”) or the sample of new clients of Autonomy for Q3 2009, page 3, (how many are not located in North America / Western Europe?). Further more, when it comes to commercial open source, I don’t see so many obvious successes either. I don’t say there are none but I don’t see anything dramatic or consistent with the dynamism of these economies. To make a long story short, the open source is definitively a key driver for them but the commercial open source (COSS) must adapt itself dramatically to be really successful there.

Some will argue rightfully that several (free) open source software are already extremely popular there, fair enough, but it does not mean that the existing offer can answer all requirements. I am more believing these buoyant markets have adopted what was existing but I am quite sure that they will also require commercially supported open source software like anywhere and for the well-known reasons.

Some are raising the point that the model is more related to services than licences (I am not so sure), some are mentioning the necessity to adapt the commercial offer to these local markets (well, we always have to adapt to any specific market and every market is specific so I don’t see anything specific there). Actually I believe the issue is more to be on two sides, but definitively not about the recipes “how to grow in fast growing economies markets”: the first one is the ability to deliver what these markets are looking for in terms of product, services, and pricing and the second one is the ability to invest into them as a key priority for the company’s growth strategy. The first one is basically saying you need to organize your company for these markets (which are not alike others as usual). The second point means it may not be trivial and can even be antagonist with other priorities for your existing markets, so you’d better believe in what you are doing. Both are saying you are aligning the whole company for this goal: becoming a global player, in particular being a global player for the emerging countries. I may be wrong, but I definitively don’t believe you can manage both markets classic/emerging in parallel but in a quite well integrated way.

Of course you need to have the people able to manage such markets, even more important you need to build a consistent strategy to set up a global growth for these markets and to link it to your global company growth strategy as, obviously, “the old Europe” and the “falling Dollar country” will stay for months if not years the main markets of the COSS for most of us.

One of the biggest challenges seems to me the return on investments which are unlikely to come so quickly, as far as I know. Not that you won’t get return on them, but they are obviously either better ways to invest your money as a COSS or it won’t pay as much as it should at the beginning. Both strategies are causing troubles for the different types of COSS companies. Those bootstrapped need to invest wisely as their money is scarce, those VC backed up need to get ROI within months or if not within no more than typically a couple of years. It won’t prevent both to invest into these markets, but it will not help to make them growing dramatically and at the level it should. More important, the fast growing markets are not homogeneous, but rather the opposite, and what works for Brazil won’t work necessarily for India. However, it seems quite obvious for this new decade to bet on those who believe into these markets.

Some analysts like to say: “We should not really care about corporate assets as a web project just last usually no more than three years so that’s not the point to focus at.”. Whereas sometimes true, I like to disagree as quite a few of our clients – if not the majority – have a much longer timeframe either because they want it, or because they need it. But I am not an analyst, I am just a software vendor, and admit my vision might be by definition limited. But that’s mine and it looks to me that investing into a technology designed and organised to work for the most promising markets will mean something when it comes to chose a software for a corporate project such as a global intranet, global corporate websites and other strategic web projects. Right now the point seems to be still very secondary, I am just wondering how long it will remain so. How long can you still be considered a “leader” whereas your commercial footprint stays weak into these markets?

If you want to share information, visions or trends about commercial open source and fast growing economies, I would love to hear from you. I have my thoughts and my experience, but I believe the road to be wide opened and quite long.

Speaking about Web, Enterprise or “whatever letter” Content Management software, some like to say the COSS was one of big new things of the last decade. Will this one be the one of these fast growing markets? What do you think?
Happy New Decade to all!

Some additional readings:

Open Source Emerging markets, a few points
Involving the Indian software services industry in the free and open source software world
Open Source in China
Top 5 emerging markets industry guide
Where is open source activity by Redhat
Emerging markets and MySQL

"Newly Industrialized Countries" (Source: Wikipedia) and "Developing Countries" (Source: Wikipedia)

   

Click here to download:

Commercial_open_source_for_the.zip (50 KB)

Software vendors don’t like so much publishing their prices on the web site. They will explain they have a very complex price list, or can be very creative justifying why they can’t. But to make a long story short: they just don’t want to. I don’t see the value for the client to hide the price. And that’s exactly why they don’t like to show it.

I can’t say there is a significant wind of change, but these days, several people have been arguing that Commercial Open Source Software (COSS), at least should publish their pricing.

Anyone who spent some times in countries located into the Middle East knows there is no price written in the bazaar. (By the way, it is funny to read into Wikipedia that “The word derives from the Persian word bāzār, the etymology of which goes back to the Middle Persian word baha-char (بهاچار), and meaning "the place of prices"”. Ironic, isn’t it?). And business is business so what works for Bazaar works also for other businesses, and, more important, that's where business was invented, a long time ago.

First Bazaar's Principle

As usual, the vendor is doing is best to sell to the buyer the highest price possible. Of course no vendor will admit it, but that’s basically the reason why you don’t have prices available. Hiding the pricing helps a lot. It is really a great rule; everybody will pay its “custom” price. That’s great. The more you are ready to pay, the better the margin will be for the vendor and the buyer will just pay the price he decided to pay. Everybody’s happy. You usually learn that basic principle during your very first year of sales, wherever you work.

Second Bazaar's Principle

There is another (excellent) reason: people are not logic, they have emotions. They can be influenced. So they can change their mind and can adapt their budget accordingly. First you attract them, and then you try to convince them. Some people may not be interested into an expensive product first, and then would change their mind finding it finally to be the perfect match for their project.

But is it the perfect business model?

There is no perfect business model, by definition. But there is a basic principle into business: you have to be consistent if you want to be understood and to convince, it helps to be understood. As I am too a believer there is no “open source companies” but only open source projects, I would not say COSS need to publish their prices. That said, transparency is a key value of open source, so it is very consistent to publish the prices for that reason. That’s also why people will be looking for with COSS. Some will say there can be no transparency in business, fair enough, but at least there can be some transparency in the public price, which is already a lot.

Further more, I hate losing my time, like everyone, but as a COSS vendor, I am supposed to be more competitive too. COSS are supposed to be cost-killing solutions. So I cannot afford losing my time, and that’s a fact, sales model of COSS pretend to be more effective (Optaros’ white paper, page 6). For one client who will change his mind on his budget (assuming he not only wants but also can), how many will just knock at the wrong door, dreaming of a software too expensive for their budget? The second principle of the Bazaar is not consistent with the COSS argument of having more competitive sales.

So why does a vendor publish his pricing?

Because he believes it is a commercial advantage.

Publishing prices means renouncing to the Bazaar's Principles. It means something; it is not just a detail. So don’t expect high discounts with the vendors (otherwise they would be fool publishing too high prices), but expect them to believe in transparency and openness. Like in any business, you can ask for discounts if you are ready to buy something unusual (volume, volume, volume - mainly), but, obviously, you cannot ask simultaneously transparency and high discounts. As you know the price since day one, it is consistent.

We are almost in 2010, the software industry is a worldwide vibrant B2B business, so maybe it is time to renounce, for good reasons, to the so old Bazaar's Principles. Further more, open source is more and more adopted by global companies. Their projects don't like surprises and are allergic to aggressive commercial behaviors. Anyone who will take a few minutes browsing the web will find a good estimation of the software pricing thanks to the Searches/Social networks/Analysts reports. Why hide something easy to find out? Last and not least, every vendor should be able to justify its pricing and be convinced it is the perfect price. There is no such a (good) thing than a vendor believing into his pricing.

So, buyers, what do you prefer? Are you keen giving an advantage to the vendors not hiding their pricing? Or do you still want to be the next victims of the Bazaar's principles?

I did my best here, as a software vendor, to participate to the buoyant conversation about “fixing the wcm”.

Don’t expect an immature market to behave like a mature one.

Highly fragmented, evolving dramatically fast, based on emerging standards, concepts if not technologies, people seem to discover – rightly - there is something to be fixed in this business. Yes, don’t expect something else, unfortunately. Projects managers want new sophisticated features able to fulfil complex business requirements, users want simple tools to use, procurement wants much cheaper prices, vendors need to grow fast as generously funded by ambitious VC, if not disillusioned investors who put millions into WCM and are still waiting for ROI, big (historical) players seem to be more interested and skilled at milking the business cow - rather than innovating and beat the competition and – not a paradox - they are making therefore benefits.
What a mess, indeed.

Maybe it is already true, I just think that should be the Gold rush for skilled practitioners and consultants, they know the weaknesses and the strength of the products, the usual mistakes done during an implementation, how to advice clients. That’s trivial, fair enough, but so what?

That’s all I have to bring on the table?

Well to be frank, I am not so much convinced in anything else but relying on the right people, like in any complex and unstable situations. You don’t like consultants? Hire a skilled WCM project leader. You don’t find any? Reduce the ambition of your project. You disagree? No problem, but you have been warned, you will enter into a dangerous zone.

I have read it was everybody’s or nobody’s fault (implementers, vendors, clients: type #fixwcm into twitter). I have read everything should change, and don’t see where it will really fix the problem. It will improve the results, reduce risks, of course, but I doubt the entire proposals are likely to fix it.

I am an (arrogantly supposed) experienced mountaineer, and live near Chamonix. So I know several mountain guides. They often say mountain guides are here for two kinds of people: those too beginners to go alone in the somewhat dangerous and somewhat unpredictable complexity of the high altitude, those skilled but having too ambitious plans to be able to accomplish them on their own. There is no way to go in the mountains safely alone in these two cases. But if you are experienced mountaineer and are spending your day doing something consistent with your skills and means, you should return home in good health, and (relatively) on time. Same issue for a WCM implementation…

I am not sure if you need, or even if you can fix within soon the WCM, I just believe you should be aware it is a dangerous business, and learn how to live with this reality.

That’s it? As it is unlikely to change soon, yes, I am afraid that’s it…

The implementation of CMS / Portal software is not least critical for a client than the product itself. Actually it is even much more as what matters to the client is the final implementation. Strangely, it seems to me that this topic is not so much discussed maybe because not a matter of technology but mainly a matter of management and business. I can nevertheless recommend reading the great blog CMS Myth.

Also rather rarely discussed is the relationship between the software vendor and its partners.

Basically it is well known that one will find two models: vendors making themselves the implementation and those relying on their partners’ network. The first is the so-called “direct model” and the second one the “indirect model”. Things are not so Black and White on Earth and much more Yin and Yang, so usually vendors are using both modes depending on their strategy, their management, spring or autumn and… opportunities even if, as usual, they might pretend the opposite.

That said, every vendor should clarify its intention and assume the Pro and Cons of each model. Every business person will try to leverage benefits of both, but, and that’s what I like in business, at the end of the day every vendor will need to assume its choice. Actually the twitter mania / blog & other social networking are helping a lot making things clearer. Choose any side you want, but you will be known for your decision: direct or indirect or a mix of both with clear rules you actually apply or no rules but the vendor’s short term interest.

Any rule works. If *no rules but vendor’s short term interest* won’t prevent the vendor getting new partners and new clients, it will certainly not help the vendor building a network of skilled partners, able to be successful at integrating the product.

That’s why clients should be aware of the vendor’s policy about the integration model direct / indirect.

The choice of Jahia has been for long to rely on its network of partners. It does not prevent us for knowing somewhere how making an implementation:

1) To support actively clients who don’t want to have integrators and want to make the integration work themselves,

2) To do the implementation ourselves when the client demands it (yes it happens…),

3) To train the new partners of Jahia and let them integrating the software for their clients successfully.

We have written this policy in our (public) business partner program.

So it means for our clients that we can help in different ways them but will not compete with our partners. We can do a part of the implementation ourselves if they want – especially if we have no partners in a given location – but we don’t try to be a fine young cannibal because the strategy is to transfer the knowledge (about our software) to our recurrent partners and – we don’t hide that point, to take benefits from the strong commercial network of our partners. We like to work with the same partners and we welcome new partners who convinced us they should become recurrent partners, whatever the reason may be. But we are quite realistic on their real motivations, so no reason to hide the real intentions.

Why? We just prefer to focus at the product development and supporting our clients and partners rather than diversify into complex services somewhere quite far from our product core business – we won’t get any strategic value for becoming an expert in “MySQL –in-cluster integration” (for example)!

In conclusion, I believe any policy works, but it should be clarified for clients’ and partners’ benefit and should be consistent with the vendor global strategy.

That could even be a new “Vendors Meme”… Jon started it with its “How to keep a CMS vendor on their Toes”. The list was commented by several “usual suspects”, but it was well improved by Jeff Potts by its nice “Summer grilling tips for your CMS Vendor”.

I could myself add a couple more, but I am not a masochist – I am myself a CMS sales person. That said, we all agree, it is an excellent idea to focus at the people and not only at a product when a buyer is about to start a new CMS project.

So it makes a lot of sense trying to guess how trustable people are during the presales. But I am far from believing trust may appear from a list of (tricky) questions. Whereas most of these questions can be very relevant for a given project, it is about trust and the question is more “how grilling tips can help choosing the most trustable vendor?”

How the BBQ cession is actually the CMS Sales Idol

Well, thanks to this BBQ cession I believe you will certainly choose – with some sadism btw – the best sales person. Managing tricky questions is a sale’s routine. Some are gifted for such shows, some are not. It won’t mean they will be more – or less – honest than the others, it will mean there are better sales people than the others.

I understand the audience had funny – or sad - experiences with terrible sales people; we all have had terrible experience with sales people, we are all buyers of something in this world. And a demo is a demo, the unique chance to make a first impression, fair enough, but trying to grill your sales representative will have mainly two effects:

-         Satisfy your sadism if you get some pleasure making people miserable (why not),

-         Detect how good the sales person is.

The sales’ grill cession is not a trust challenge. It is a sales academy to detect the best sales persons.

Maybe I am wrong as a sales person myself, but I am much more in favour of pragmatic meetings, and making people comfortable: it always help to see how they really are.

My opinion: the best way to manipulate a vendor is to make him comfortable and make him believing you are not so skilled, not so aware, and not so clever that you actually are. If dishonest, the person will take the opportunity to use your fake weakness/lack of knowledge and will bullshit you in a way you won’t miss. If the sales person only wants what a sales person should (making a business successful, not only a sales itself but the whole project), he/she will behave accordingly.

It can’t say it has been a pogrom – vendors listed into love it of course - but their WCM magic report received a very cold welcomed from the non-vendor-community:

On the 31^st of July, Gartner released its (in?)famous WCM Magic Quadrant.

A few days later, several blogs were published, most of them were not “very” enthusiastic:

CMS Watch: Looking beyond the magic quadrant to find the nitty-gritty

Brandinteractivism: Gartner’s WCMS Magic Quadrant is unfair to Open Source

Jon on Tech: What has the ministry of magic quadrants got against me

Word of pie: Am I buying a WCM solution or stock?

At least, (at last maybe), Irina Guseva just commented the release without arguing against the Gartner: Parsing Gartner’s 2009 Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management

And I found only one – relatively - positive comment from Kevin Cochrane into Jon on Tech’s blog…

Whatever I missed, there is a clear consensus against the MQ of Gartner.

Whereas I fully understand the critics – most of them are quite true – I cannot support any consensus against the way analysts are providing advice and I am not so sure it makes sense to focus at what Gartner does not say or the limits of Magic Quadrant.

By definition, an analyst is supposed giving unbiased critics, based on facts. There is always some interpretation or perception but analysts are mostly saying how things are. What could be criticized is what they are focusing at, or even they commercial policy to get revenues, or business model. Fine, but I don’t mind as long as their analyses are honestly performed.

Why? Because analysts are providing advice, to let people decide. Most of the time they are just providing advice (no offence), they don’t possess any theoretical and mystical “truth”. Reality, while sometimes sad, is more complex than just an analyst advice and decisions are far from being taken only according to facts and unbiased analysis.

So Gartner is providing reasons to people to explain their decision often based on so many criteria (including - and not covered by Gartner! - irrational fear/trust about a vendor, about some people – presales team they met for instance, – rarely but it happens too - personal interests, hidden agenda, – or whatever reason someone cannot often give to his/her colleagues / team / managers). So these reasons are not for some people the good ones? Fine, but why pretending it is useless to all? If it were, nobody would purchase Gartner’s reports.

Ah yes, of course, the vendors… their sponsors! OK I propose to add this new conspiracy to the long lists of the famous conspiracies.

More seriously, I don’t think there is an analyst “better” than another one (maybe a WCM vendor A can provide a better multilingual feature than a vendor B, but as long as an analyst is making his job honestly – analysis based on facts – by definition I don’t see the point comparing them). There are just analysts who provide more interesting /detailed information than others, according to me, to my requirements, and to my agenda.

The more different from each others they will be, the better it will be.

Open source mob disagree or is upset because we are making only the 4% of the revenues covered by Gartner according to their criteria? I just agree with Seth Gottlieb comment: “If buyers are still making decisions based on what Gartner says, they are probably not ready to benefit from open source anyway.” True, if you need a supplier which is an established company for years, soon but not yet, open source is maybe not for you. Period. You find the reason stupid? Sadly, sometimes it is a requirement (and this requirement upsets me so much, like traffic jams and French strikes when I used to live in Paris, but I have learnt to live with).

So where is the problem? At least we will see next year what is the WCM open source trend, ok according to Gartner, but a trend based on facts. At least open source vendors can also say “we are known and commented by Gartner”.

At least Gartner is a good indicator of the vendor corporate assets. Every buyer should be interested into corporate fundamentals. I never said they should decide only according to them, I just believe they should also look at them, take advice and as usual eventually make their mind.

So yes, I am a fan of Gartner.

“The worst threat for a good plan is the dream of becoming a perfect plan” – Carl von Clausewitz.

On July the 29^th, Day Software (SIX: DAYN) published quite impressive results for the first half of 2009 and actually that was the 2^nd quarter which was impressive as the first one was not better than 2008’s 1Q. (Read my blog post, the paragraph about Day). Therefore, even if I am a little bit paranoiac by definition of my job, I just tried to find out how they have been able to use their 4Q results – quite bad – to make the 1H looking better by “making it even worst” (e.g. there is often some revenues you can postpone and charges you can anticipate) but I can’t really see how, at least significantly, as the nice part of the semester... is the second quarter. So in conclusion, Day, for me, just made an excellent quarter, really. And that’s good news both the open source and for the WCM industry.

Considering the huge investment done into their new product and its release date (4Q08), it is not such a surprise but, in 2009, it is still excellent news. Of course one good quarter does not mean so much – neither a bad one does – but we can hope Day will make too a decent, good or even maybe excellent 2H and it would be a – bad – surprise – if there second half would be not showing some bright colours again. Indeed, the main new push is given by the release of their new product and, I hope, by the top management, who changed one year ago. Last and not least, the global economic context should not really get worse worldwide (can it really be worse btw? !). So, to me, there is no challenge to make a second good half, it looks to me to be more a “duty” for their sales team! (Yes I am putting here some pressure, I hope the Day’s sales team will appreciate :) ).

So what are really the main challenges of Day for 2010?

Not surprisingly, Day points out the necessity to invest in sales and marketing. But this is a fragmented market, both big and small. It is big when you take the sum of its small independent and fragmented markets. But indeed small and fragmented into regional markets, e.g. a German country manager will not sell easily, far from that, to a French client or conversely. And building a country’s network/reputation takes often time, especially when you are just a few months ahead of opening new premises locally. Day has invested already into countries’ developments and Day’s visibility is quite good, as they are targeting majors companies and already broadly covered by analysts. So the main issue seems to me for the next months to be able to develop new markets thanks to the existing local sales team and those likely to reinforce the sales group. Even if Day is giving public numbers on sales & marketing costs, the efficiency of these investments would not be easy to evaluate as there is, so far, no breakdown by country publicly published. If I were a shareholder of Day, I would ask for it and will demand how much will come from the business development program compare with the existing and recurrent market where Day’s reached the “critical mass” to develop itself given the local team, local clients in production and skilled local integrators, but that’s another story.

Of course for the mid term and as usual, Day will have to be again very creative about the product like any similar vendor. That’s their reputation so this is a challenge which does not concern me too much. The main challenge is overconfidence, Day has had several years not so successful, and strangely it keeps you away from overconfidence. Several successful quarters would not mean they don't not need to reinvent everything again. This business is to be good at changing, evolving, and anticipating and even the more modest can forget it when success is coming.

But Day’s ability to create value for their shareholders seems trickier when you have a closed look at the company’s history. Their accumulated deficits – not only during the crazy years of the dotcom burst even if it makes the biggest part of this cake – are really huge. Day has very few debts but has burnt so much cash of its investors in the past that it must now prove its ability to create value from it. The recently appointed CEO is very experienced, and will have to demonstrate the ability of the company to invest wisely without losing the strong creativity skills of its engineers. Obviously, and they cannot be blamed for that, there are very proud of their product, they may now need to become proud of their company’s financials.

Day is indeed famous for having heavily invested into open source projects – given back to the community - and is definitively a key player for several very promising initiatives. It would be great seeing Day’s results in the future again profitable and its benefits regularly growing. Very few open source companies are publicly listed, and the private ones have often a corporate communication far from being transparent. So such performances would show, based on facts, the financial advantage of the open source business and the Day R&D team could be extremely proud of that.

Nice challenge for a skilled manager like Mr. Hansen and his team, and the success will be easy to evaluate.

wfrtipx5h7

For the last years, consolidation has been very strong into the ECM/WCM/Portal industry. You cannot find any longer so many public companies but I have listed them and will do my best to update the calendar of results on a quarterly basis.

Most of the time, the software is a part of the business, or the “content management software” is a part of the business. This definition is a little bit fuzzy – I agree- but that’s where this market is too. So I will mainly focus at this part as I am covering the “content management” business only.

(CET Time)

2Q09 results publications are on going, you don’t need to be an analyst to see there are mixed results… Tough years are not so tough for some, but conversely you can’t judge on one or two missed quarters – or brilliant quarters. I would not bet so much on the likely-to-be-winners of this downturn, yet.

I am certainly not an analyst and won’t pretend at all defining a global trend into the market, but I like to make some free comments about these results:

Autonomy – Interwoven (LSE: AU): published impressive financial results (Fully diluted EPS grew by 61%, I am impressed…), once again. No doubts about their ability to grow organically. Their 50% of recurrent business looks quite low for such a big company (for this market)... I am positively impressed by their ability to convince new clients. That said, their acquisitions skills have been more questioned in the past, and I am not sure they are improving so much reading their PR and their slides: “Interwoven integration essentially complete with group gross margins rebounding to pre-acquisition levels” : I am translating freely this quote in “OK Interwoven margins went down during several months, so what?”. Due to costs of restructuring or something else? We don’t know, but as they don’t explicitly give this reason, I will look at the evolution of this integration closely. We don’t get either any numbers about this acquisition so we can’t say if it is or not a good deal – done for more than 700 M$. When you don’t show up numbers, you are rarely proud of them. And when the MD speaks about the future, the trend is explicit, there is no trend: Dr. Lynch concluded, "Despite the continued uncertainty in the markets, we remain cautiously optimistic.”. Whatever the results of the next quarter will be, he will be right. Nice shot Dr Lynch.

Open Text (NASDAQ: OTEX): The other cash-machine of this industry has recently acquired Vignette. Whereas I do understand the value of the Autonomy acquisition of Interwoven (even if the execution seems not to be “smooth” but that not a surprise either), I have been quite sceptical about the integration of Vignette into Open text (read my blog’s post). Open text will detail its integration plan of Vignette during its next results’ conference call (August, the 20^th). I want to read numbers, not a general and useless bullshit such as “cross selling synergies”! I want to see how they will propose to their clients, investors and employees a good story. I will also closely read anything about how they see the future’s trend.

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT): the open source champion – extremely profitable too - is aiming at the application business but does not provide yet any significant financial information about this (likely to be small) part of their business (Jboss portal), so I just don’t cover it so far. But it may change considering their growing interest into this content management software business…

Day (SIX: DAYN): the Swiss WCM vendor (last one to be publicly listed and focus only at WCM…) will release its results in August, the 7^th. Unfortunately we don’t have the chance to have any other information about the 1Q09 but their revenues (7.4 MCHF versus… the same 7.4 MCHF in 2008) and this laconic quote: “Day Software […] today reconfirmed guidance for financial results for 1H 2009 based on strong customer growth in Q1 2009 from continued momentum for its ground-breaking CQ5 platform”. So I will just have a close look at their costs evolution since 2008 and the new projects revenues.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) is reporting global results for their software operations, so I am more focusing at the global trend. The company is heavily followed and I don’t have anything brilliant to add. Same for Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL). Their revenues are clearly going down (IBM 1Q09 and Oracle 1Q09) but I just believe – too bad for the open source gurus – it is from far too soon to believe in the imminent extinction of the dinosaurs and I am not even yet convinced of their real decline.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT): everybody will look at Sharepoint 2010 results… in 2010. Period.

SAP (NYSE: SAP): the German giant has been seriously hit by the economic downturn. Will it recover quickly? To be followed in July the 29^th. To be also followed: their implication into Portal (SAP Portal) and also of course ECM through SAP Venture (Alfresco, Newgen, …) or thanks to their long relationship with Open Text of course. Consolidation seems to be trendy in 2009 again; but will SAP take the move in the middle of the storm? Seems to be unlikely isn’t it? OK so I have just written it may come as M&A are by definition surprising.

EMC (NYSE: EMC): 2Q09 results to be published later today… I will comment them if… I find something interesting to say!

SDL (LSE: SDL): the mother company of Tridion should release in August their mid term 2009 results. To be followed up…

Alterian (LSE: ALN) cannot care less of their investors, and the acquisition of the CMS Mediasurface cannot be commented therefore. Their last release is just something they did because they had too and basically they gave more or less no relevant information. At least they have the honesty to admit it (“Alterian […] today publishes its Interim Management Statement covering the period from 1 April 2009  to the date of this announcement, as required by the Listing Authority disclosure rules.”) but some care for their investors would not be inappropriate.

 Please let me know which (publicly listed) guy I forgot …

Disclosure: No position but I am working for a privately hold WCM, open source, software vendor (Jahia), who competes with the software sold by the here above vendors.

When Clickability published their white paper, I have no doubt they wanted to make as much noise as possible as any marketing action intends to but I think they where quite surprised (in a positive way) how brilliantly successful it was.

The art of lie, the value of fame

Some will argue this made them a very bad brand image but you have to be so naive to believe this can really matter. Lies, deception are easily forgiven by the mob (Mrs. Berlusconi / W. Bush / Blair – and so many others, have all been re-elected despite their famous and clear lying behaviour),. What matters is how famous you are and your skills at using this reputation.

So several famous and – unchallenged – analysts or blogger (Kas Thomas – Irina Guseva – Jon Marks) flamed the Clickability paper for excellent reasons and deserved once again their reputation of integrity, fairness, professionalism and technical skills. If their goal was to promote these values - their values - they just did the opposite. I don’t think they needed to point out their values, nobody will doubt about them. They don't need fame either, they are already famous, and their reputation has been done since months if not years (an eternity for this business). So I believe they have just been manipulated. Despite themselves they promoted those with subversive behaviour. By defending their values, they promoted the opposite. The only thing a vendor needs in 2009, is to be famous. They gave Clickability a lots of fame, maybe for a few days only, right, but for the cost of the white paper, that a great ROI.

“The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about." – Wouahou, Oscar Wilde anticipated the web 2.0!

Web 2.0 is going to be a nice place for Swimming with Sharks, online

When you have some strong ethic, it is very annoying to be manipulated as - per definition- you don't manipulate. When you get used to, you try preventimg being manipulated, not always successfully. Then you learn to strike back. Everybody knows that. And that what the analysts did.

But when you are swimming with sharks, you just learn to strike back in the way which serves yourself and your (hidden of course) agenda and nothing else matters. Then, at the summit of this art, the only thing which matters it to be famous for having this skilll:

"Hidden talent counts for nothing." and “I don't care if they hate me, I just need they fear me" - Nero

After this short moment of history of the Roman Empire, let's come back to the web 2.0 and the content management software industry:

Before the web 2.0 era, the main thing which matters was to get a WCM product as well noted as possible by analysts. No "twitter", no “intense debate”, not so many forums to promote your brand, just your web site and the analysts. Now what matters is to be known by the community and ... to be the as famous as possible not for your product but for your "web 2.0 show". Welcome to a world of show business, deception, lies and superficiality.

Analysts are often saying “we never advice vendors on what their product strategy should be”, so as a vendor myself, I will certainly not “advice analysts on their web 2.0 communication" but I can’t prevent my readers reading again this fantastic essay written long before the web started:

The 36 Chinese stratagems

A classic issue raised once again by Tony Byrne is “Who is paying for what?” (read the comment of Tony) during pre-sales process and the choice of the product through a Proof of Concept (POC). As usual I do not believe so much into black or white answers but I will try to give my ideas.

 First of all, one should remember that quite often, prospects are arguing they should not pay for demos or proof of concept for several reasons such as:

-        "That’s a pure sale cost, so I should not be charged for that,

-        " I have already invested a lot into the preliminary analysis and defining the POC, we should share the burden with the vendors,

-         "Should the product be easy to be customised and fit well with my requirements, the POC should not be costly and is a fine opportunity to the vendor to demonstrate its product’s flexibility, so I will not pay for that,

-         "Some vendors are ready to do it for free, so why pay for the POC?

And all these reasons make sense.

But usually I just disagree and as VP Sales of my vendor, I am very often if not always declining the offer of making a POC for free.

First of all, from the vendor point of view, one should remember that a vendor can’t get rich with POC, so POC paid will only cover some expenses and nothing more than that.

Jon Marks also quoted (read his comment) that “When vendors do these demos as part of "Business Development" and aren't getting any $$$ for their troubles, I've noticed they often don't put together very good ones. The good people are often busy on Billable work. And the vendors that are going through a good patch might not bother to respond to the RFP if the cost of sale is high.”

Believe me, Jon is damn right!

Now let me give my personal position:

Sadly in this world, nothing is really free. So if you get a free demo, do you really think the vendor is paying for it? NO. It is not the vendor who is paying for the free POC, it is its clients already using its products. That’s very basic. What is coming out must come from somewhere and the source of revenue of a vendor is … its clients.

You can turn it in every way, at the end of the day, the already-in-production-client is paying for the free demos.

Frankly I don’t see why… Can the vendor do an effort and take the POC for him? Sure, it will be charged by an extra cost somewhere to those already “feeding” him: its clients. So the vendor will increase something somewhere, or will not start some other investments interesting for its clients, that’s a physic law or a finance law if you prefer.

Recently, we had a very similar experience where a major European administration contacted several vendors (10 actually) and sent a very detailed scenario for a quite complex CMS project (major site factory), which was very relevant and professional btw. The client invited us and we declined to prepare a taylor-made demo but we promised to make a generic demo starting from scratch (product as it is after the download from our website) following as close as possible the scenario. The prospect was fine with this approach. It went well because the scenario was well aligned with our product capability. Should the product be not well aligned, it would have been very obvious during the not-prepared demo. It would also have been quite stupid to send for a round trip day 2 senior sales people in Europe to visit a prospect with so few chances to win but that another story about “efficiency of sales team” and is off subject of this post.

Of course for very complex scenarios, this approach may not fit so well. But for very complex scenarios, why the existing clients should pay for the next clients likely to use the product through very expensive projects? Please let me know. And I will not believe a client cannot find additional budget for this (Does not want, yes, I understand why again, but can’t find, no sorry I don’t believe that).

So this looks to me a good compromise when a client demands a POC but don’t want to pay for it: if you, as a vendor, is really confident on your product’s alignment with client’s detailed scenario, propose a generic demo aligned as much as possible with the scenario and prove how well you can answer the clients’ requirements and explain you don’t want to charge your existing clients what the potential future ones are asking for. And of course, get the approval of the prospect about this approach.

Usually, the prospect would choose a couple – if not only one vendor – and will pay for a POC with the finalist(s), just to check as much as possible if the project can really be done by the chosen product.

Of course you will not please every prospect, and as a matter of fact no vendor can win any project. You can't be liked by everybody as a sale person, and as a vendor your product cannot be the right one for every project.

And if my sales pipe is not big enough, I will do my best to find more leads, this is a big market, still highly fragmented but I don't see where I would accept to work for "free" and deny the commercial policy my other clients have chosen.

A vendor should be proud of its commercial policy and remember that the best way to win a project is not to do what a client demands, but to focus at those your product has been designed for and to take care of the people ready to understand and approve its commercial policy.