So ironic its scary! Symantec flaw

It would seem Symantec has more than a software hole to plug, they’ve got a pretty serious PR predicament.  In an ironic twist, the company that touts itself as “a global leader in providing software, appliances, and services to help individuals, small and mid-sized businesses, and large enterprises assure the security, availability, and integrity of their most important asset — information” is now part of the problem.  They constantly tout that they’re on 200+ million computers and, if this hole is true, they are now putting 200+ million computers at risk.

I won’t regurgitate the details.  You can read the full story here.  I just found this one of technologies ultimate ironies.

Hey High Tech companies - You are what you are...

You are what you are...

An alternate title for this post could be "You are what you are so embrace it and do the best you can". This is something I've thought about quite a bit in my career marketing technology products. Coach Bill Parcells, currently of the dreaded Dallas Cowboys, uses the expression when his teams are .500 and press asks if he thinks they're better than that. Having grown up in New York and gone to school in Boston I've seen Parcells as a head coach in a few different cities and he always answers that question with the same phrase - "you are what you are and right now we're a .500 team and we need to figure out how to be better than that."

This saying translates well to high tech companies. Many companies come up with flawed strategies by not understanding (or choosing to ignore) what they are and believing what they call themselves and if you, as a marketing professional, can't convince the world that the company is something that they're not then you're just not very good. Fear not, it not you its them. You can eventually grow into something else but only if you come to grips with what you are at the moment.

Here's what I mean - "innovation". Particularly technological innovation. According to Wikipedia:

Technological product and process (TPP) innovations comprise implemented technologically new products and processes and significant technological improvements in products and processes. A TPP innovation has been implemented if it has been introduced on the market (product innovation) or used within a production process (process innovation). TPP innovations involve a series of scientific, technological, organisational, financial and commercial activities. The TPP innovating firm is one that has implemented technologically new or significantly technologically improved products or processes during the period under review.

Every company wants to be the innovation leader or revolution leader. But to be an "innovative" company, in real life, you need to introduce truly differentiated or something that would take the incumbent a very significant amount of time to replicate. In the world of networking, innovation is a term that is abused horribly and several cases of mistaking true "innovation" with "building before Cisco does" have been the source of hundreds of millions in lost VC money.

This doesn't have to be the case (losing the money on a less differentiated, less innovative product). If EGOs can come to grips with this simple statement - "you are what you are". If you embrace the fact that you're product is not "ground breaking" then you can strategize and maneuver your company to survive and grow into something special. But an undifferentiated, low innovation product requires a different corporate strategy and approach then a truly innovative technology company. Its not that it doesn't work, it's that it's just not the same. Embrace the fact that your product is less innovative, less differentiated and you can start to build a great company.

Lets go back to the networking world for a minute. If you're in networking and you've "innovated" something then it has to be, as a good rule of thumb, something Cisco can't replicate inside of 24 months. If Cisco can replicate it (or their marketing tells people they can) within 24 months then you haven't innovated and you won't survive because most Cisco customers (which are most of the enterprise networking customers in the world) will just wait until Cisco does it for them. Its just more convenient and in alot of ways cheaper to get it through the incumbent.

Example of a company that didn't innovate but had the 24+ month jump on Cisco? Easy - Juniper Networks. They made a router in 1995. Cisco had been making them since the mid-1980s. Thats not an innovation to networking. What they recognized was that they could, because of Cisco's bloated code base and software features and new (at the time) ASIC capabilities, create a router that is far faster than the Cisco routers - filling a need that Service Providers had - and it would take Cisco years to catch-up. Cisco was caught up with multi-protocol routers (back then there were many networking protocols) and Juniper further differentiated (or "Niched" themselves) by creating an IP-only router. This was fine because mid-90s was the age of IP - everyone was migrating to IP and eliminating other protocols.

Some argue that the speed and efficiency of the Juniper router was the innovation. But that really isn't "innovation" that can stand on its own - they made another router. It was faster but it was technically close to the same speed as the Cisco roadmap. Their architecture was somewhat innovative and allowed the actual speed of the router to meet the advertised speed while Cisco wasn't coming close to the advertised speed. So while it wasn't mind-blowing innovation what they did do was deliver the router that Cisco themselves said customers needed before Cisco had a chance to do it. Result? Massively successful company that, at the end of the day, understood that they were a router company and if they rested on their laurels then Cisco would catch up. They understood that "they are what they are" - a router company - and continued to expand their product portfolio that was consistent with their niche - service provider core -and gain more of the Internet core router and service provider networking market before Cisco could catch up with even their first product. They knew if they sat there with several sizes of the same fast router that others would catch them. They caught Cisco by surprise (who in turn helped them by underestimating this new threat) and kept running at top speed and delivering good product.

Thats a great example of understanding that you are what you are and no amount of marketing would make you something else. No amount of marketing would've made Juniper the "end-to-end networking company" that Cisco is or the "full-service networking supplier" without a massive professional services force. Many at the time said they were crazy but they stuck to their guns and maintained a lead that even Cisco's customers couldn't say "I'll just wait for Cisco, thank you very much, goodbye". Customers had to listen.

In that same vien, look at the China-based networking company Huawei. They're 100% comfortable with the fact that they are completely undifferentiated, in fact they LOVE that fact to the point where Cisco has had to sue them a couple times for copyright and patent infringement. They've taken a low-cost, price based strategy to market and are doing quite well. Chinese government contracts are helping them with their super low margin products but they are gaining steam in other parts of the world too. Given they understand that they are what they are - a manufacturing company that produced networking products - they're approach to the market is the right one.

This "You are what you are" saying gets more interesting when you look at a case where the company doesn't embrace that mantra and today finds themselves, in this industry observer's opinion, circling the drain.

I'll save that discussion for "Part 2" of this entry...

Intel new naming - getting back to basics?

Intel revealed new branding for the dual-core processors its been developing - Core2 Duo. The brand is meant to replace the previous Pentium brands, which makes technical sense since the underlying micro-architecture is a departure from the Netburst micro-architecture that anchored the Xeon and Pentium chips.

Intel branding has been interesting for that last few years as they've reached a point where the CPU speeds are out-pacing the software that they were running. In prior years branding by speed was easy enough because the faster the processor the better software ran - now the processors are plenty fast so there isn't a noticeable difference between 2.4Ghz and 3.2Ghz therefore its hard to charge more money. So Intel has been straddled with how to differentiate their processors when less than maximum speeds hit the "good enough" mark. They started off branching the Pentium into high-end, low-end, mobile - i.e. Xeon, Pentium, Centrino, Pentium-M, etc...and charging various price points for each. The results - lost marketshare to competitors as they too where "good enough" and cheaper. Now they're changing the underlying processor technology (or micro-architecture) so they are taking this opportunity to create another brand - Core2.

Question you have to ask is - is a change in the micro-architecture really mean you need to change the consumer brand? What I mean is - if I'm still able to run Microsoft and Adobe and various server software as an end-user, is it necessary to add another brand to the consumer line up? I mean, lets face it, even if you're buying a Dell or Alienware or HP computer, Intel has done the remarkable job of commanding a premium through making the consumer aware of the processor and getting them to pay more. Pentium (which replaced the 386, 486, etc.... techie monikers that related to gate counts) had reached the brand-awareness level where it was sought after. Now the end user's experience is basically "Pentium processor with dual cores which means it runs faster and uses less power" so why not maintain some "Pentium" awareness? Developers will know difference through datasheets, etc... so that's not an excuse. When "Centrino" was added it cost $100M some-odd dollars to brand that and all it was was a Pentium with on-board Wi-Fi digital and analogs. Centrino successfully became the "mobile wireless Pentium" synonym but at the cost of watering down the Intel brand just a little more. Too many sub-brands making the inherent value of having an "Intel" processor lost on the consumer (and therefore premiums begin to disappear).

Turns out this is more than just adding another confusing Intel brand to the mix. It actually sounds as if there might be a branding reset in the works. Intel's release states:

By offering a single brand name for our mainstream desktop and laptop dual-core processors, Intel's branding strategy makes it simple for consumers and businesses to choose a powerful and energy efficient processor - and makes it easier for developers to "write once, run everywhere."

I believe this is good news for Intel's fortunes. Consolidating the brands to this brand could effectively become the equivalent (to consumers) of what the "Pentium" brand used to be. That would be great news.

"With this unified PC and notebook brand and microarchitecture, everyone will have a simple way to choose the most powerful and energy-efficient processors in the world, and developers will be able to more easily write optimized software just once for a variety of computing segments," said Eric Kim, Intel senior vice president and chief marketing officer. "We want these processors to be the heart and soul of computers that are increasingly bringing magic to our digital lifestyles."

If they get back to basics, clarify the product for end users, and get away from tying brands to engineering builds then its safe to say that they will see a stem in the tide of marketshare erosion. This is a good opening salvo. Lets see what happens 1 year and $100M later...

The only thing that worries me is that they still have a wide variety of off-shoots - Intel® Centrino® Duo mobile technology, Intel® Viiv™ technology and Intel® vPro™ - which do little more than tell you what features are built-in (wireless, video accelerator, etc...). Those still are unclear and create confusion. The Intel branding conundrum will be interesting for years to come.

From the world of “its a small world”

Well known product marketing guru/VC/advisor/author Guy Kawasaki has a post on "Marketing Remix" and he's even created a great tool that incorporates the concepts of Marketing Remix that he calls "The World's Shortest Marketing Plan, Version 2.0". Very nice tool if you need to try to pull together a marketing plan for your company. As Guy points out, most marketing plans, particularly for small companies, are overly complicated. (he's also posted about Jajah...like I said, small world...)

Are AOL developers living in a cave?

AOL IM

I don't consider myself a power user of IM, not since I saw my younger sister-in-law's IM Buddies list, but I do think its a very useful tool for efficient, instant communication. I liken it to shouting over the cubicle wall in an office except its not the person 2 feet from you, its the person in another building or city or country. When you're in product marketing, these 'spontaneous' communications are very very crucial. Get a quick answer from an engineer on a technical point or from a sales person about a customer. You can always call them if it requires more explanation. So, in that sense, I consider myself a heavy user and my work is heavily reliant on that tool.

What do I use? Trillian - multi-protocol in one screen. Don't get all the Yahoo smileys (you do get some) but you have a network independent IM client with plenty of flexibility to organize you buddy list.

AOL has a new IM client and I don't remember the last time they updated but I know an update of some kind was badly needed. The previous client is such a piece of garbage I found it annoying to even look at. Thats why when I saw a new IM client was released I thought I'd download it and try it.

My conclusion - what an unmitigated piece of garbage. I guess the more things change the more they stay the same. The interface is still crowded with horrible ads. The flexibility is so limited it makes me gag. And anything extra that you want to use with it will cost money. The cave that they're living in is the network of AOL users who are, unfortunately for them, stuck with AOL buddy lists and can't switch to another network (like Yahoo or ICQ). Its obvious they have no intention of expanding their reach beyond the AOL community because the client lacks anything to attract new user - they're banking captive audience.

Note to AIM users - You can change your client to ad-free, more flexible software. Two of them are Trillian and Gaim (not associated with AOL).

VoIP - the business models (and usefulness) keep evolving

VoIP has been gaining steam for a while now and with Internet access nearing ubiquity models on how to use the technology keep evolving.  One of the more interesting models sure to garner alot of attention is a small firm called Jajah.

Jajah seems to be leveraging a very interesting operating principle of VoIP – call initiation.  A VoIP server establishes a call between two end points and then the call is effectively peer-to-peer.  Jajah is using this to market “web-activated telephony”, i.e. you setup a call from their website between a two phones.  The interesting part is that this is the end of the website’s involvement.  The call is established and your computer is no longer involved.  Both end points of the call received incoming calls and therefore are not charged for the call.  The only charge is Jajah's $.02 per minute – much less than any long distance rate that I know of.  More over, you’re not tied to a computer or a VoIP client (like the Skype WiFi clients or desktop clients).  Its incredibly simple and really ingenious.  So if you used this service to initiate a call between your cell phone and another person you could physically get up, shut off your computer, jump in your car and drive and still be doing it for $.02 a minute.

Screw “where do I sign up?”, I want to know “how do I invest?!?!”…

Marketing Remix - a must read

For those fresh out of MBA school or "well versed" in the 4P's of marketing, here is a blog post that is very enlightening. From the Sviokla's Context blog comes "Marketing Remix". With the world being transformed by technologies that empower consumers and customers how does the approach to properly capturing that customer change? Regardless of what you're talking about, the ability to have information on demand almost anywhere changes how products' value is perceived.

Jump over to Sviokla's Context blog and check out the Marketing Remix of the 4Ps. Its worth the read for any marketing professional.