Chuck's Blog

Connecting The Dots May Be Dangerous

If I'm a vendor, and you are my customer, will you give me permission to connect the dots?

Will you view me and my company as a provider of separate, standalone niche products, or are you willing to consider the synergies my company can create if you allow us?

Before you answer, you might want to read the rest of this post ...

Vendor Differentiation Through Thought Leadership

Many years ago, I remember a presentation that made an interesting point -- the view is always better from the front.

The presenter showed a slide that depicted what the lead dog in a dog sled race might see.

Nice view of the trail ahead.

The next slide showed what the view might be from farther back in the pack. Not so nice.

And, not to chest-thump or anything, but I've been noticing that my humble little company appears to be causing a number of other vendors to follow, rather than lead.

And I have to ask the question -- what's more important?

Trying to show the way, or beating up on the other guys?

Alternative IT Thinking

My previous post on "frictionless IT" kicked up a bit of dust, if the email traffic is any indicator.

I think I ended up carving an interesting line between what IT has traditionally been, and what it's more likely to be in the future.

Clearly, not all of IT can end up in a self-service, few-questions-asked environment -- at least, not anytime soon.

But I think it's a fair question as to where we'll start to see newer forms of "utility-based" IT models spring up around virtualization -- and whether the utility model will actually extend to the users.