SOA filling the Gaps

The title of the post summarize the bottom line of my recommendation to a customer.  The Short List included three software products. Two of the products were owned by the same vendor. Let call the best product product A, the worst product product C and the third product product B. Why I recommended not to select the best product? In my opinion, product A was better than the other two technically and conceptually. However, the same vendor was selling product B as well. Due to overlapping products in companies acquired by the vendor he owned two competing products. The key question was: Which product is the vendor's strategic product? My answer to this question was: product B is the strategic product. My customer was buying a significant product for Long Term. For the long term, the vendor will invest in Research and Development in product B.  He will invest as less as he can in product A. The support to this product's customers will be minimal.  Ven...

In previous posts I described Customers Types such as: The Customer Who Knows Everything , The Self-Deprecating , The Captive , The  Paralyzed Analyzer ,  The Good , The Bad and  The Ugly . In this post I am going to describe The Social Customer. The Social Customer is not necessarily a heavy user of Facebook , Twitter or Linkedin . He is deeply involved in the Professional Community.  He knows exactly what his colleagues are doing.  His decisions are based on popularity: He will do exactly what the majority of his Professional Community members do. His decision is based on localization of the saying: "One Billion Chinese People Can't be Wrong". For example, if he will have to select a Software Product, he will select the one which the biggest number of organizations decided to buy and implement. What are the advantages of Social Customer Approach? 1. Sometimes not only billion Chinese are not wrong. Million Israelis or ten millions Americans...

picture source: Wikipedia The word Captive in this context, is not about someone caught by enemy's forces.  It is about a customer, whose conception about the Consultant's topic are dictated by an expert or someone pretending to be an expert.  In a previous post you can find an example. The post titled:  Vendor Survival Guide: Supermarket, Grocery and Kiosk .  An example depicted in that post was Data Sorting   Software product selection process. The Captive Customer selected a product of Servers and Operating Systems vendor (The vendor is an analogy to a Supermarket). I recommended, a superior product of a small company. Sorting Software was the only product the company developed and marketed (Kiosk). The "Supermarket" does not care, if you buy chewing gum , as long as you buy meat , fish , bread  and milk (Servers, Storage , Operating Systems etc.). The kiosk's existence depends on chewing gum (Sorting Software). The "kiosk" will try...