Recent Postings

Go after a Large Market that Can Be Penetrated in a Cost-Effective Manner

Welcome back to my series on what I consider to be the "key DNA" elements that your product and company must have to be successful in the infrastructure software market. In this blog entry I talk about DNA element #4, which is: try to make sure that your product really plays in a large market that can be penetrated in a cost-effective manner.

Is it a Feature or a Product or a Mini-Platform?

Welcome to the third post in my Entrepreneurship in the Infrastructure Software Market (EISM) blog. In these initial set of postings I am blogging on what I think are some of the key DNA elements required to be successful in this market. As expected, luck of course is DNA element #1. In my last post I discussed DNA element #2, which is your solution must be considered by the customer as being "must have," and discussed the importance of vetting this well before full-blown development of your product has begun and really determining how likely customers would be willing to replace an existing piece of infrastructure for your solution. In this post I will discuss key DNA element #3, which is you should ensure that whatever infrastructure software solution that you build and release has the ability to morph fairly rapidly and easily beyond what can be perceived as a feature of the underlying platform and into something that can become a mini-platform unto itself.

Make Sure Your Stuff is 'Must Have'

This is the first blog post on what I consider to be the "key DNA" elements that your product and company should have to be successful in the infrastructure software market. The DNA elements I describe in this and other postings are not in any particular order. As I mentioned in my last post, key DNA #1 is luck, but enough said about that ...

EISM's Blog README file

Welcome to the first entry in my "Entrepreneurship in the Infrastructure Software Market" blog. By "entrepreneurship" what I am referring to is the strategy to build a product and company into something successful. By "infrastructure software" what I am talking about is the market for operating systems, systems and network management products, storage software, security software, and similar products; i.e. your classic "systems software." An analyst group such as IDC sees "infrastructure software" as one of the three major categories of software, with the other two major categories of software being "application development and deployment software" and "applications and information access." As you can see from my bio. I do have some exposure to the later two markets (namely when I was at Oracle for a few years at the beginning of my career), but frankly my career over the last 15 years has been in the infrastructure software space, and that's the space I will blog about.