RE: [ba-unrev-talk] The Strange Case of the Disappearing Open SourceVendors
Mark, (01)
Thanks for the message. (02)
There is a legion of generic collaborative software roadkill. Most of
the offerings were innovative and substantial technical achievements. (03)
They all seem to go through the same 2-4 year lifecycle in the following
order: (04)
We are: (05)
1.) Collaborative infrastructure, e.g., dial tone
2.) Consumer centered, e.g., B2C or C2C
3.) Business centered, e.g., value chain focus, B2B
4.) Enterprise focus, e.g., teamware, collaborative project management (06)
By this time, these start-ups/entrepreneurs have used-up their capital,
are burnt out and suffering from product management fatigue. (07)
Some fail their way through 'enterprise focus' and settle in on a
particular vertical. (5.) (08)
The path to success here is to win over some domain experts and
integrate deep vertical logic into the collaborative offering. This is
still very risky and capital intensive, but really the only way to have
a go in this space. (09)
IMO, this lifecycle is a perfect reflection of what it should be; it's
backwards. It is critical to *master* a vertical, before moving up and
out. (010)
Therefore, the wealth creation concerning open-source collaborative
softwares must surround exploiting the vertical domain expertise and
logic. (011)
This approach creates/sustains the virtuous cycle that is elemental to
open source success. It also creates the multiples and scale that would
attract capital. (012)
Broad-based, universal, open source collaborative information
technologies sans specific vertical logic and focused application are a
pipe dream mostly. (013)
Cheers, (014)
-jtm (015)
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
[mailto:owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org] On Behalf Of Mark Szpakowski
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 8:16 AM
To: ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
Subject: [ba-unrev-talk] The Strange Case of the Disappearing Open
Source Vendors (016)
The Strange Case of the Disappearing Open Source Vendors: interesting
article (by Tim O'Reilly) and discussion at
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/06/28/vendor.html. (017)