It’s always great to see an underdog win. The IT industry boats a long list of innovators who created breakthrough technology and propelled themselves to market leadership against much bigger and well-established competitors. VMware (NYSE: VMW) certainly fits that bill.
Microsoft has been in the ISV recruitment business to bolster support and market acceptance of its operating system(s) for nearly three decades. Remember the launch of Windows v1.0 in 1985?
Members of a channel programs team from a large, global software company sat across the table from me in a legitimate quandary. They were debating whether to continue to require their global system integrators (SIs) and IT outsourcers to have technical staff on the ground with local language skills in each and every country where the partner was authorized to sell the vendor’s software.
It’s all been written already: The prototype’s got great CPU power; a big, high-res screen; cool, detachable keyboard; and promised access to a wide variety of Windows applications. Yes, Microsoft has re-entered the volume hardware device market. However, it’s doing it without the assistance of one of its biggest competitive weapons vs.
You’ll probably remember the disheveled comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, and his litany of “I get no respect” jokes. One of my favorites – “My parents gave me no respect; my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.” Or, “I haven’t spoken with my wife in years.
For today’s software developer, there are many choices of technology platforms on which to build next-generation applications. Oracle, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, IBM, SAP, Google, Amazon Web Services, Apple and others are in a heated race to win the hearts of minds of ISVs — both those retrofitting legacy apps and those building ground up for the cloud.
Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” IT vendors would be wise to embrace that timeless wisdom. A wide variety of global IT vendors indicate “being easier to do business with” is their leading channel initiative for this year. But their partners generally say progress here is not fast or deep enough.
