Articles

Affichage des articles du septembre, 2014

Focus On Your Customers And Not Competitors

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A lorry is a symbol of Indian logistics and the person who is posing against it is about to rethink infrastructure and logistics in India. Jeff Bezos is enjoying his trip to India charting Amazon’s growth plan where competitors like Flipkart have been aggressively growing and have satisfied customer base. This is not the first time Bezos has been to India and he seems to understand Indian market far better than many CEOs of American companies. His interview with a leading Indian publication didn’t get much attention in the US where he discusses Amazon’s growth strategy in India. When asked whether he is in panic mode: For 19 years we have succeeded by staying heads down, focused on our customers. For better or for worse, we spend very little time looking at our competitors. It is better to stay focused on customers as they are the ones paying for your services. Competitors are never going to give you any money. I always believe in focusing on customers, especially on their latent unme

Grounding the Cloud: Basics and Brokerage

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" Picture Ben Franklin attempting to harness energy from a lightning-filled sky. The key tied to his kite was the middleman between electricity and the ground. This book details how using the cloud can be your key to finding or enhancing success." Understanding cloud computing is hard enough. Cloud service brokerage, however, is the way forward for just about any enterprise. This book is an easy to understand overview that will allow you to harness the power of the cloud to advance your business goals using clearly defined concepts of cloud computing, easy to understand definitions, comprehensive checklists, and real-world success stories. Written by my friend Todd Lyle, it explores the three cloud models (public, private, and hybrid) by showing how organizations of all sizes, from small private accounting firms to massive governmental agencies, can utilize the current IT revolution to greatly increase productivity by embracing the cloudʼs ecosystem of shared services. Earlie

Disruptive Enterprise Platform Sales: Why Buy Anything, Buy Mine, Buy Now - Part II

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This is the second post in the three-post series on challenges associated with sales of disruptive platforms such as Big Data and how you can effectively work with your prospects and others to mitigate them. If you missed the first post in the series it was about “why buy anything.” This post is about “why buy mine." Convincing  your prospects they need to buy a platform is just a first step in the sales process. You need to work with them to convince them to buy not just any platform but your platform. Asking the right questions - empathy for business This is the next logical step after you have managed to generate organic demand in your prospect’s organization a.k.a “why buy anything” as I mentioned in the Part I . Unlike applications, platforms don’t answer a specific set of questions (functional requirements). You can’t really position and demonstrate the power of your platform unless you truly understand what questions your prospect needs you to answer. Understanding your pr

Cloud Services Brokerage: Adding Trust and Oversight to Complex Cloud Deals

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According to the Gartner IT Glossary, "Cloud services brokerage (CSB) is an IT role and business model in which a company or other entity adds value to one or more (public or private) cloud services on behalf of one or more consumers of that service via three primary roles including aggregation, integration and customization brokerage". The value of these brokerage services are fueling a major debate in industry and this month in BriefingsDirect, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions , is contributing to the discussion with a timely podcast in which he moderates a discussion between Todd D. Lyle, President of Duncan, LLC and myself on the value of CSBs with an emphasis on small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), regional businesses, and government. No two businesses have identical needs, and so specialized requirements need to be factored into the use of often commodity-type cloud services. An intermediary brokerage can help companies and government agen