Posts by Michael Duggan

IBM hits software with 20 per cent Power6 tax hike

Confusopoly

The term you are looking for is Confusopoly which is becoming a standard response by large corporations when they product they sell is a commodity with no discernable differences (worth noting anyway). As databases become a commodity, even given away for free, it becomes harder to differenciate on cost/performance/features. So just confuse the customer! This tactic is mainly used to retain current customers as opposed to gaining more, in that the customer can't easily see that the current product is compeditive or not. Witness mobile phone plans, Utilities etc to see who the confusopoly is taking hold!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly

Xerox: Web 2.0 coming to a grey box office soon

Xerox late again...

I have no idea what Xerox are selling here once again. What is the relevance between Java and HTML which have been around for a decade? My organisation procures a very significant amount of Xerox equipment but find that:

- Xerox never tell us about their technology (we have to find out on the website ourselves). In fact Xerox don't even tell themselves - case in point, Xerox Europe tried to implement a Documentum solution only for it to be killed due to budget cutbacks. Only then did somebody realise Xerox made a CMS system (docushare) ! that they could implement instead, and then realised some of their customers might want to procure it!

- Pricing is normally way out in the initial stages which frighten off the clients. (15K per named user of their search system (forget the name but sold off to one of the big search players).

- So clients don't buy and Xerox don't invest in the product.

- So it ends up being sold to somebody who will do something with it or it gathers dust.

Xerox really need to work on their ability to take a product from research through to the market in a semi competent manner. And yes Marketing does matter - if I don't know Xerox sell it I'm hardly going to purchase it am I!