Dan Yurman wrote:
Perhaps it has already been mentioned in a previous post, but a key to
end-user acceptance will be to drive market share and adoption of the
product as a platform for third-party add-ons by independent
developers. These activities ideally should proceed hand-in-hand.
It creates synergy between market share and end-user adoption
especially as users in vertical markets see opportunities to switch to
free applications in their work areas or industry.
The creation of development kits and organization of forums for
independent developers to share ideas could facilitate this effort.
Hi Dan,
I have to disagree. Or at least I think I do. I had to read that three
times to figure out what you were saying. ;)
However third pary addons do not effect real simple end user
experience. The build in market share in your model has to be driven
from the top down. However it doesn't matter how many third party
add-ons are developed if industry can't find grassroots operators for
the applications. It is simpler for business to put applications in
place that they know they can get operators for.
While I agree that marketing has to establish brand awareness amongst
the decision makers it is simpler for those decision makers to go for
the established software that is taught at school level, because they
perceive that doing it the other way will result in training costs that
are at present being carried by the training institutions. While this
may not be actually true, it is a perception created by the encumbent's
TCO marketing blitz. As long as the FUD has a small basis in reality;
ie not enough end users trained in using OOo which would mean a
migration cost, then the decision makers will stick with the
status-quo. The old adage that "No-one ever got fired for buying
Microsoft" is a truism that we are up against because the real
perception that MS Operators are what is being supplied by the Education
system. We are in a Chicken and Egg cycle , the training organisations
say that they use MS because that's what industry uses and industry says
we use MS because the TO's are feeding us people who can only use MS
products. We must needs break the cycle, the INGOTs programme is one
way of doing that, by catching the end user before he/she gets on the
merry-go-round.
Having said all that I'm not decrying the idea of third party add-ons,
they are definitely a required element of the growth of the product but
it is certainly not the huge ingredient that will drive adoption....
unless of course one of those addons turns out to be the next Killer
app. But that's like hanging everything on winning the lottery. :)
Cheers
Yo
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