[Zope] A Tale from IBM land...

[Charlie Blanchard]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 03:14:51PM -0400, Chris McDonough wrote:
[brevity snips]
> 
> The customer doesn't realize:
> 
>  1) That open source makes that argument largely irrelevant.
>     But we don't really have the marketing muscle to fight this
>     battle, at least where it needs to be fought.
> 
since i'm about to have to make a pitch of oss/zope on a major
project to a verrrry skittish ceo, i'd be real interested in any
expansion of this point you'd care to make... :-)

>  2) That there are hundreds of consultants familiar with Zope/[insert
>     other open source solution here] that can take over that 100%
>     when the one who sold it to you goes out of business.  This
>     is also a marketing problem.
> 
t'would be lovely if there were some statistics on the zope.org
site to point at to help salve management's fears. the arguments
often go along the lines of "where do we get qualified developers"
and "they've got to be more expensive" yadda yadda yadda...

> Grassroots, "line-level" employee support is most of the support that
> open source has got, and that's its marketing engine.  The engine has
> been incredibly successful.  More successful than anyone could have
> hoped.  But it's still a fact that people don't like to buy something
> they haven't seen on TV...
> 
> Think of a high-level executive making a decision about buying a content
> management system like a foreigner on a business trip in a strange
> land.  Everyone is bugging him to eat at their restaurant.  He
> recognizes none of the names of these restaurants, and doesn't really
> even understand what kind of food each restaurant is selling.  But then
> he sees the McDonald's "golden arches" (MS/IBM).. and he knows that.  He
> knows McDonalds isn't the best food, but it's a safe bet in a foreign
> country when all he wants to do is eat and move on.
> 
> You need to understand this mentality to successfully sell open source
> software to the OSS-unaware.  You need to produce the soundbite version
> of what a particular solution can do for the company, and don't get
> religious about it, just compare the features and the prices of the
> "McDonalds" solution to the OSS solution, and let the folks come to
> their own conclusions.
> 
got any case studies or white papers that detail the trade-offs
between closed/open source and what factors succeeded in turning
the client to the open source solution? inquiring minds want to
know... <g>

-- 
charlie blanchard
http://baldguru.com/
LosAngeles area Zope Users Group http://lazug.org