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What's
New
“High Up in the Cloud” Computing Symposium
Launches
As announced, we are moving forward with this
series of round table discussions around barriers and bridges to Cloud
Computing in a variety of industrial sectors. This will include competitive
assessments of which vendors are most favored to win the business as well
as an overall market perception of major players and their approaches.
According to Shawn Fisher, Market Analyst of our
Redmond office who is coordinating this effort: "We are very excited
about our work in this strategic space. Early research has led us to
believe that the customer decision process paradigm is shifting and vendor
efforts at providing decision inputs still need extensive development.
While Gartner and IDC etc. provide landscape information and forecasts and
trends, our deep dive customer work fills a real gap in identifying
strategies and tactical response for our clients."
We will be approaching major Cloud vendors for
sponsorship of specific topics in our series. If you are interested in a
sponsorship package, please contact Shawn Fisher (shawnf@siliconvalleyrg.com)
Silicon Valley Research Group Announces
Government Systems Group
Silicon Valley Research Group today announced the
forming of its Government Systems Group to cultivate research opportunities
with the Federal Government. Focus areas will include research on
technologies for deployment by Government agencies, independent review and
analysis of new technology exploration areas such as Cloud Computing and
exploration of clean tech and alternative energy market assessments.
“Having assessed Federal Government needs in this
area, we have a unique opportunity given our domain expertise and history.
We expect the Government sector to grow over time to represent a sizeable portion
of our revenue portfolio,” according to Lee Clements who is spearheading
the internal task force on this initiative with other team members. Federal
C&C registration has been completed and the company is moving forward
with the completion of a GSA schedule in the coming months to facilitate
procurement. For more information, please contact Lee Clements (leec@siliconvalleyrg.com)
More Customer Reviews
In our last edition, we shared customer reviews
from a recent survey where we asked our clients to rate their satisfaction
with us. The one dominant theme in the open-ended comments received is the
value that our domain expertise plays in both execution and outcomes of
their projects. On the former, it means less management time for our client
personnel and better design of survey instruments with minimal client
inputs. On the outcomes, the analysis and insights are more strategic. In
particular, we have heard from you that the insights are framed in the context
of the competitive landscape, which is extremely useful in the current
challenging market conditions.
“The team at
Silicon Valley Research Group was incredibly knowledgeable about the
research project that we hired them to do for us. I felt really comfortable
with just giving them control. I knew I would get the data I needed out of
it, that was comforting. There was a wide breadth of services that Silicon
Valley Research Group provided, so I could go to them for a variety of
research needs and that helps a lot because I can deal with a single
vendor.”
- Senior Product Manager
“One of the
things I like about Silicon Valley Research Group is that once we
determined where we were headed, they really drove the project for us from
beginning to end and did so quickly. They really ran with it.”
- Director of Marketing
“Silicon
Valley Research Group has enabled us to make the customer experience come
alive, and what I mean by that is its allowed us to not just get
confirmation but have a richer experience of what we needed to develop in
order to allow the customer to be successful with our product. They helped
us round out our understanding of our customers’ needs and build a better
product because of that.”
- Director of Online
Marketing
“I think
Silicon Valley Research Group's attention to detail is excellent. We've
always gotten the information we needed and its been presented in a very
effective manner. We continue to work with them because they solve problems
for us.”
- Senior Product Manager
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Al's
Corner
What problem are we
solving?
The above question gets my vote
for worst question that a technology marketer can ask. Yet it is the
favorite question of angel and venture capital investors today. And most of
the advisors in Silicon Valley will tell you that your investor pitch must
pose and answer this question.
Since investors invest “by the
numbers” I will not dissuade any potential fund-raiser from addressing this
question when looking for investment but the following points underscore
the limitations imposed by asking such a question. While many new
innovations come to market to solve a specific problem, many of the
successful innovations are “aspirational” in nature rather than problem
solving. They enable users to do things they could never do before, nor
envisioned doing before, nor was it a problem they were trying to solve. In
this context, I consider Facebook and Twitter aspirational. Likewise, the
movie "Avatar” is aspirational.
The question limits the vision
of the founder and imposes constraints on the imagination of the investors.
The resultant pitch and business plan will not maximize the potential of
the offering. If it passes the “investability” test, it may fail the market
acceptance test, not a favorable outcome for either founder or investor. I
wonder if Facebook and Twitter would have seen light of day had their conception
and development been constrained by the above question. Would love to ask
their founders that question someday!
Aspiration based offerings offer unlimited potential for
expandability. Once users start to do what they never envisioned doing
before, they are on a discovery path to finding new ways to use the
offering. Examples of this type of “crowd-sourced” evolution abound in many
areas particularly with social networking sites such as Linked-in.
Lastly, start ups and early stage companies are not the only ones
bound by these questions. More established technology vendors often miss
customer aspirations by limiting themselves to what problem the customer
needs to solve. In our client work, we call this the “white space”. This is
a particular problem for technology vendors playing catch up to a market
share leader. By focusing on why customers buy from the leader and what
features we need to build to respond, they fail to realize the only
strategy that can unseat the market leader, changing the game. An
aspirational approach on the other hand, asks customers to identify their
“white spaces”, and leads marketers to the place where opportunities to
change the game lie.
Al
Nazarelli is President & CEO of Silicon Valley Research Group Inc. He divides
his time between our San Jose and Seattle offices and can be reached at aln@siliconvalleyrg or
408-920-0361 ex 701.
Wine of the Month
Most exceptional and exciting wine of the month is:
Silverado Vineyards 2005 SOLO Cabernet Sauvignon
Tasting Notes: Intense dark ripe red fruit
aromas with dried herb and spice leads to a broadly structured palate with
layers of berry fruit compote, bittersweet chocolate and vanilla.
Unique Features: 100%
Stags Leap Cabernet
Suggested Retail: $85
Inspiration
"There ain’t no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish
something” Thomas Edison
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