Ian’s Blog on Open Source Marketing

In my previous post I wrote on “A Marketing Model for Open Source”. I finished by saying

“Open source has to have a different approach to the massive gorilla software companies of today. It can’t use its dominant position to force its platform. There is a better way. I’ll explore alternative models for different types of companies later.”

I recently read an article by Mary Jo Foley called “SharePoint: the next big “Operating system from Microsoft“. In this article it says:

• “is it correct to think of SharePoint as almost like an OS (operating system)”? “Bingo.”
• “So how does Microsoft keep the growing family of business services it is introducing tethered to on-premise software”
• “SharePoint Server is the answer. Not Windows. Not Windows Server. Not Office. SharePoint.”
• “Ballmer told the Convergence questioner he was dead-on in his thinking.”
• “Ballmer also provided one of the most succinct definitions of SharePoint Server I’ve heard from any Microsoft exec. SharePoint is just like Office; it’s a bunch of point products gathered together into a suite.”

This got me to thinking about Gorillas (Microsoft) and “The Platform Play”. There is an excellent book called “The Marketing Playbook” by John Zagula and Richard Tong. It details the plays they used “during their years of spearheading the marketing efforts that drove Microsoft Windows and Office to global dominance.”

A summary of how the book outlines the Platform Play is as follows:

Market

• “Inherently the Platform Play is about defending and expanding your turf”.
• “Your Platform is like currency. It’s good to be able to print money”

Read Office
Strategy

• “Use the strongest, most broadly applicable aspect of your technology or business to seed the center of a new ecosystem.”

Read Office

• “…the field needs to be defined in a way that excludes most of them”

Read SharePoint – Collaboration, Portal, Search, Content Management, Business Processes and Business Intelligence

Positioning to Partners

• Invite partners “to joint in your little slice of heaven”
• Make sure “the risks of opposing it stay high”

Read ECM vendors pulling back from the ECM market to develop applications on top of SharePoint from fear of Microsoft.
Messaging

• “In a Platform Play you make comparisons to yourself.”

Read SharePoint version 2 a notoriously weak product
Finally

• “Platforms die when innovation dies”

This strategy can be summarized as using office dominance to expand into a new larger “uber” platform.
Wikipedia comments on previous platform expansion behaviour as follows:
“United States v. Microsoft 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) was a court case filed against Microsoft Corporation on May 18, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and twenty U.S. states. Joel I. Klein was the lead prosecutor. The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser sales. The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft’s victory in the browser wars as every Windows user had a copy of Internet Explorer. It was further alleged that this unfairly restricted the market for competing web browsers (such as Netscape Navigator or Opera) that were slow to download over a modem or had to be purchased at a store. Underlying these disputes were questions over whether Microsoft altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers, Microsoft’s conduct in forming restrictive licensing agreements with OEM computer manufacturers, and Microsoft’s intent in its course of conduct.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Interestingly though as the book states “Platforms die when innovation dies”. In the words of Microsoft “SharePoint is just like Office; it’s a bunch of point products gathered together into a suite.”?
Innovation or new “uber” packaging?
The real situation is one of choice. Do you want to be tied into Microsoft for the whole stack of:

• Operating System
• Database
• .NET
• Portal
• Browser
• Office
• Wiki
• Blog

What about your corporate infrastructure standards and user preferences?

• Operating System – Linux or Windows
• Database – My SQL or Oracle or DB2 or SQLServer
• .NET – Java or .NET
• Portal – LifeRay, JBoss Portal,
• Browser – Firefox or IE
• Office – OpenOffice or Office 2000, Office 2003 or Office 2007
• Wiki – MediaWiki other massively used wiki software
• Blog – WordPress or other massively used blog software

We are now moving to what Geoffrey Moore called “The Stack Wars” - Get a whole stack from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM or SAP.
In summary is SharePoint the killer platform or the “Choice Killer” and “Corporate Standard Infrastructure Killer”.

Open Source is the alternative to being tied to a stack.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Content Management, Open Source, Open Source Marketing, SharePoint. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.