A WRONG pitch for the "enterprise" minded
NEWS FLASH!
Open source technologies run our daily lives!
I've given many demos taking on the role as an engineer, an advocate of open-source and selling my business. I have to say that most times, I am trying to "prove" that open-source has a place in the enterprise B2B market. More times than not, I find myself attempting to sell the notion that a "freely available" product can work harder, faster and better that some commercial solution. This situation happens even if it isn't directly relavent to the solution I'm there to pitch or demo. In most cases, my jovial "community of experts" approach comes across as what most sales folks would call a "tap dance". I was wrong in doing that, in fact, I was way off base ...
Let me explain, its simple enough once you read it.
Open-source moves B2B, the movement comes in ways that an average employee may not even get to witness. Open-source development has led to the ability to answer daily questions such as, "do I have any orders on my Yahoo cart?" or the "Do I have any emails in my Gmail account?" or even "Did my best friend update their Facebook status?". In fact, I don't know how many times I've been on the recieving end of functionality that gets the "Oh that's cool..." nod because of the tools open-source technologies provide me.
Everyday, there are Fortune 500 companies reliant upon the abilities of their engineers to deploy and maintain open-source applications. In fact, I wonder if those Mars rovers would have lasted so long without a few OS ideals .... hmmm.
So, in summary, I was wrong in waisting my time "doing the dance". Open-source doesn't need my help in that regard (probably would have begged for me NOT to). The next time you find yourself pitching an open-source idea, don't fall into my mistake if they question you. Give them a few usage examples and (under your hat) question them as a potenial client for even asking....
(A few enterprise stories for the super techs out there proving my point)
Over three years ago, I was pitching JBoss messaging server would be far superior to any other messaging platform for our 10,000+ daily message translations. I had to prove this concept to a group of Fortune 100 company (named omited for obvious reasons) non-believers, by sending 5 times the daily messages as they expected to be "laughing" on lookers. Of course, it did just fine and passed with flying colors. So much so ... that it is considered main test platform today.
Open source technologies run our daily lives!
I've given many demos taking on the role as an engineer, an advocate of open-source and selling my business. I have to say that most times, I am trying to "prove" that open-source has a place in the enterprise B2B market. More times than not, I find myself attempting to sell the notion that a "freely available" product can work harder, faster and better that some commercial solution. This situation happens even if it isn't directly relavent to the solution I'm there to pitch or demo. In most cases, my jovial "community of experts" approach comes across as what most sales folks would call a "tap dance". I was wrong in doing that, in fact, I was way off base ...
Let me explain, its simple enough once you read it.
Open-source moves B2B, the movement comes in ways that an average employee may not even get to witness. Open-source development has led to the ability to answer daily questions such as, "do I have any orders on my Yahoo cart?" or the "Do I have any emails in my Gmail account?" or even "Did my best friend update their Facebook status?". In fact, I don't know how many times I've been on the recieving end of functionality that gets the "Oh that's cool..." nod because of the tools open-source technologies provide me.
Everyday, there are Fortune 500 companies reliant upon the abilities of their engineers to deploy and maintain open-source applications. In fact, I wonder if those Mars rovers would have lasted so long without a few OS ideals .... hmmm.
So, in summary, I was wrong in waisting my time "doing the dance". Open-source doesn't need my help in that regard (probably would have begged for me NOT to). The next time you find yourself pitching an open-source idea, don't fall into my mistake if they question you. Give them a few usage examples and (under your hat) question them as a potenial client for even asking....
(A few enterprise stories for the super techs out there proving my point)
Over three years ago, I was pitching JBoss messaging server would be far superior to any other messaging platform for our 10,000+ daily message translations. I had to prove this concept to a group of Fortune 100 company (named omited for obvious reasons) non-believers, by sending 5 times the daily messages as they expected to be "laughing" on lookers. Of course, it did just fine and passed with flying colors. So much so ... that it is considered main test platform today.
posted by Damon at
10:45 PM
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