When the time really is right!
Solving business problems using technology is a funny thing because you can never really predict when an idea or technology is right or if it will ever take off.
You can get lots of advice, oh yes, we as a company have had lots of advice from very smart people and many of our competitors have received lots of advice and even lots of money from very smart people but those things are really just interesting, that advice alone rarely steers you to success despite the good intentions of the people providing the advice and the usefulness of the money.
No, what really determines the success of an idea and then the success of a group of companies that are focused on those ideas is something very fuzzy.
It's a ground swell that has to take place. Enough people need to be working on a problem, talking about how it will get solved, convincing customers that they should try it this way instead of the way they have "always done it". It is impossible for a single company to do it all and I would feel safe in saying that it has never happened that way.
The first thing that you need is not the idea or the technology, but the dissatisfaction.
You don't even need to be able to define the dissatisfaction completely, all you need is a rumbling and then you can poke at it and see what happens. You can work on it in lots of ways and eventually you can come to a solution that makes sense for lots of people.
So how are you likely to know that the change is really in the air with regards to a new idea or emerging technology?
You can't just say "well it takes 5-7 years to grow a company or a new industry" as that is a very bad measure. You have to look for the tell tale signs that a new idea has not only arrived but is having impact. For the most part the following items are good indicators that something is in the air:
Across the software as a service (SaaS) and the platform as a service (PaaS) space we are seeing all of these things happening. People get in an uproar when Google Mail is down for a few hours. The outage hits Twitter, the major Bloggers and the main stream press like a rampage.
A little closer to our home in the PaaS space we saw Coghead, one of the first venture funded PaaS companies go under, something which initially caused a bit of "I told you so's" but actually unveiled a number of interesting outcomes:
Both of these ideas are now truly important enough that people get bent out of shape if they are taken away from them and important enough that nearly everyone is writing about them and the first casualties in the battles to change the minds of the customer have happened.
The 'real' criteria have finally been met, the winds of change have blown in and there is a different course that is being followed by new companies and the older companies that can still make the change to their thinking.
At Faulkner Technologies we have been lucky in our business in that there were lots of rumblings of dissatisfaction:
This call to action is simple and when committed to can be very powerful, it allows us to ask the questions; is what our customer wants easily defined?, can it be quickly built and put into action to make a difference?, and can it be delivered as a service?
Yes, we to have had our failures, projects were we didn't really understand the dynamics, times when we didn't do as good a job as we expected of ourselves and our customers required. Operational decisions that slowed progress. This is the natural flow of things. These things need to happen with an idea, then the technology that supports the idea, then the customers who are drawn to the idea and then the industry that emerges from all of the chaos.
Even though we have been working on these ideas and challenges for nearly 5 years it is only now that some of the concepts are mainstream enough to overcome all of the natural and artificial hurdles that can be set.
In our opinion it is a good time to be in the SaaS and PaaS space, it is a time in which we as a company can make huge impacts for your customers, a time in which our most innovative clients can gain the support they need from management to make changes and an opportunity for others to create new products and services, building entirely new companies.
Now the time 'really is right'.
Thanks,
Ed Loessi
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You can get lots of advice, oh yes, we as a company have had lots of advice from very smart people and many of our competitors have received lots of advice and even lots of money from very smart people but those things are really just interesting, that advice alone rarely steers you to success despite the good intentions of the people providing the advice and the usefulness of the money.
No, what really determines the success of an idea and then the success of a group of companies that are focused on those ideas is something very fuzzy.
It's a ground swell that has to take place. Enough people need to be working on a problem, talking about how it will get solved, convincing customers that they should try it this way instead of the way they have "always done it". It is impossible for a single company to do it all and I would feel safe in saying that it has never happened that way.
The first thing that you need is not the idea or the technology, but the dissatisfaction.
You don't even need to be able to define the dissatisfaction completely, all you need is a rumbling and then you can poke at it and see what happens. You can work on it in lots of ways and eventually you can come to a solution that makes sense for lots of people.
So how are you likely to know that the change is really in the air with regards to a new idea or emerging technology?
You can't just say "well it takes 5-7 years to grow a company or a new industry" as that is a very bad measure. You have to look for the tell tale signs that a new idea has not only arrived but is having impact. For the most part the following items are good indicators that something is in the air:
- When people whom the idea will impact (in a loss of revenue or margin) begin to oppose the idea in an ever more earnest fashion
- When people get peeved when the technology it's not available 24/7
- When people write blog posts or comment that it isn't available 24/7
- When the first company goes out of business having tried to get the idea to market, but another 15 companies keep working on the idea with renewed enthusiasm
Across the software as a service (SaaS) and the platform as a service (PaaS) space we are seeing all of these things happening. People get in an uproar when Google Mail is down for a few hours. The outage hits Twitter, the major Bloggers and the main stream press like a rampage.
A little closer to our home in the PaaS space we saw Coghead, one of the first venture funded PaaS companies go under, something which initially caused a bit of "I told you so's" but actually unveiled a number of interesting outcomes:
- 10-15 providers that probably most people had never really heard of popped up and said "Hey Coghead customers, we can get you sorted out, come over to our products and we will get you back online and running"
- You actually saw the mainstream Bloggers talking about PaaS, not in the context of what salesforce.com is doing, but in the context of a range of providers that most people didn't even know existed, many of which have been slowly convincing people in the trenches for the last 3-5 years.
Both of these ideas are now truly important enough that people get bent out of shape if they are taken away from them and important enough that nearly everyone is writing about them and the first casualties in the battles to change the minds of the customer have happened.
The 'real' criteria have finally been met, the winds of change have blown in and there is a different course that is being followed by new companies and the older companies that can still make the change to their thinking.
At Faulkner Technologies we have been lucky in our business in that there were lots of rumblings of dissatisfaction:
- IT departments telling business units that they can't get that for X months
- Professional services firms who were not earning all the returns possible on their expertise
- Upstart companies with powerful ideas but limited to no experience with developing Web solutions
This call to action is simple and when committed to can be very powerful, it allows us to ask the questions; is what our customer wants easily defined?, can it be quickly built and put into action to make a difference?, and can it be delivered as a service?
Yes, we to have had our failures, projects were we didn't really understand the dynamics, times when we didn't do as good a job as we expected of ourselves and our customers required. Operational decisions that slowed progress. This is the natural flow of things. These things need to happen with an idea, then the technology that supports the idea, then the customers who are drawn to the idea and then the industry that emerges from all of the chaos.
Even though we have been working on these ideas and challenges for nearly 5 years it is only now that some of the concepts are mainstream enough to overcome all of the natural and artificial hurdles that can be set.
In our opinion it is a good time to be in the SaaS and PaaS space, it is a time in which we as a company can make huge impacts for your customers, a time in which our most innovative clients can gain the support they need from management to make changes and an opportunity for others to create new products and services, building entirely new companies.
Now the time 'really is right'.
Thanks,
Ed Loessi
