Thanks for commenting. I’m coming from the strategy side and still new to IT: the value of being open about my expectations and openly discussing where we see value hugely outweigh any (if any…) drawbacks.

Regarding solution providers, the same logic can be applied with the trio clients / vendors / solution providers (SP). SP could work with vendors along the logic outlined in the post, and agree beforehand how they will handle pilots. It should be easy to obtain pilot licenses for free from the vendors.

SPs would then provide the solution to their own clients, for some of the costs associated to building the solution. For clients, if the pricing is done well, there should not be a major difference between offsetting the costs of vendors and those of the SP.

Of course, solutions will vary along the fully custom / “productized” axis, with costs varying accordingly. But this should also be for SP an investment. As outlined in the post, once large companies embark on a pilot, it’s usually to make it work, not merely to taste the waters. So SP and its client should be well aligned in making the pilot a success and turning it into a full deployment.

I believe solutions providers have in fact a very important brokerage role to play. I’ll go deeper on that aspect in another point, with Sharepoint considerations. I agree with the dynamics you observe, but for me they stem mainly from an immature pricing and segmentation strategy from vendors.

Thanks again for your comments!

It is great that you share your thinking like this. I wish more IT-side people would do it, as I think both they and the vendors have to much to gain from a productive and honest conversation. Well done!

Right now, I think the value in the vendor space is mostly with best-of-breed tools like Socialtext, Confluence, Newsgator, Jive, etc. The problem is that none offers a full E2.0 solution like IBM Connections, and of course there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Each enterprise case is quite different.

I expect a lot of innovation and consolidation in 2009 around these issues, and I am hopeful that cost-cutting in a recession will finally be the motivation IT departments need to think beyond their current ways of working.

Well said. I definitely agree pilot should not be profit makers. I think small fees offsetting the costs for “ecosystem” customizations helps quite a bit for small vendors. More importantly, it creates partnership model and trust early in the game rather than antiquated supplier/vendor relationships.

Well said. I definitely agree pilot should not be profit makers. I think small fees offsetting the costs for “ecosystem” customizations helps quite a bit for small vendors. More importantly, it creates partnership model and trust early in the game rather than antiquated supplier/vendor relationships.