Lost In The Category Chasm? Part 1: Deal With It!

  by Richard Muirhead | 26 Jun 2008 | Permalink | CMDB, IT Management, Software, Software Business Models, Web 2.0

A couple of months ago I became the proud owner of an Apple Macbook Air. The little geezer immediately transformed my relationship with a laptop in a whole slew of ways. One way that it particularly seduced me was the delightful combination of my Macbook Air with TV Shows downloaded from iTunes. The benefits have been manifold: A). No trips to the annoying video store in my neighborhood that actually nails a piece of wood over the letter box to prevent you returning DVDs between the hours of midnight and 10 AM. This can be a problem if you work late and travel too much. B). TV that comes with me on my travels and provides a relaxing counterpoint to the joys of IT automation! ;-) and C). I finally get to catch-up on significant pop culture like Gossip Girl, Californication and of course…Lost. (For those out of the Lost loop, I will not attempt an education here, but suffice it to say that piecing together the puzzle that is Lost can be reminiscent of the shifting IT picture; limited information and perhaps the self delusions involved in defining a new software category; navigating it successfully across the Chasm and into the [far more straightforward] Tornado).

Thinking about my Macbook Air, the “hot” new thing everyone’s been talking about, got me to thinking about hot trends, both past and present, in our space, and what’s become of them. Kicking off a decade ago – and still present in many quarters to this day – BSM was the hot thing. Then came Application Dependency Mapping (ADM), then the Configuration Management Database (CMDB)… and now IT Search is gaining traction. And I know from our own roadmap and can already see evidence in the industry at large of it all moving in the direction of “Social” too.

What all these categories have in common: The desire for many different individuals across the IT organization to decipher the torrent of data emerging from the data center, make sense from it and have their own view – but also relate it to a common view. Arguably none of Business Service Management (BSM), Application Dependency Mapping (ADM) or Configuration Management DataBases (CMDB) has ever made it to the tornado of wide stream adoption by pragmatists. It is possible that in their original form they never will since there are a number of other new trends that threaten to overwhelm them today:

A. Categories lose their luster – Who needs to have solutions related to categories and the vendor products within them if what you see on the web is actually what you get…often also over the web? Might analyst categories be like the restaurant guide that you don’t need if you can just search directly for a review of the exact dish you fancy in the neighborhood you find yourself in?

B. Consumerization of Enterprise Software – ease of use for the person at the coalface becomes paramount. No longer can poor usability hide behind the mandate of the departmental manager or decision-making process of the economic buyer.

C. The Web is becoming the defining value-adding distribution channel. Salesforce.com; Paglo’s community; Service-now’s community; Splunkbase; Nimsoft’s distribution and trial; Tideway’s Configipedia. Costs are lowered, evaluation is simplified and knowledge can be generated at the coalface, validated in use and refined by the community.

So where is Tideway’s market currently located along the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC)? Well, having had a wonderful ride through the early market of visionaries and technologists – where the prospects for BSM/CMDB/ADM had been much heralded by analysts – sales cycles have lengthened and existing customers have been seeking their pound of early adopter flesh!

Thus, I would maintain that all the players in these different categories past and present are now in the process of crossing the chasm…flying through the air across this technology graveyard, eye-ing up possible footholds and finger grips on the other side. In other words, refining our understanding of the bowling pin segments in the alley on the other side of the chasm…and determining the best order in which to address them. So the question becomes…what type of analysis will lead to allow you to rank your experiences in addressing a variety of customer needs as you have been pulled left and right by early adopters? This is the topic of my next blog, part 2 in this 3 part series.