Fountainhead

APRIL 7, 2021

5 organizations and 14 metrics that make PLG work There is an explosion of articles focusing on the popularity of the PLG growth model, analyses of company valuation, and quite a bit written about growth metrics for this new model. But I want to parse the problem a bit differently, focusing not only on the goals an aspiring PLG company should set at each stage of the sales cycle. but also on how to organize delivery of a successful PLG product.

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Fountainhead

JANUARY 22, 2021

Why Paranoia, Customer Intimacy, and Peripheral Vision are key skills for Product Marketing Management If you’re going to be in Product Marketing - or in any company leadership position - I’ve found that the same 3 “superpowers” keep recurring in successful careers. These aren’t operational or functional skills per se. Rather, they are persistent perspectives that leaders with insight always keep in the back of their minds.

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Fountainhead

JANUARY 11, 2021

(A version of this Blog originally published on Auth0 Blogs ) Apps are becoming componentized and API-based to facilitate reuse and agility; Identity management cloud services will help. "In today's online-first, intensely competitive environment, creating a monolithic, inflexible CIAM system will quickly put the firm on the path toward extinction." ~ Forrester's Customer-Obsessed IAM Operating Model April 2020 There is an "old-school" view of Identity and Access Management (IAM) that sees it pu

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Fountainhead

DECEMBER 10, 2020

“Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. Marc Andreessen, co-founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz, Guide to Startups When I’m asked “What does Product Marketing do?” I respond that it’s the core role that drives product-market fit, matching the product to the right buyers. All markets are made up of buyers and sellers… and when the needs of buyers are met by the offers of sellers, there’s a transaction.

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Fountainhead

AUGUST 30, 2020

I’ve spent the past few weeks busy evaluating team performance for our semi-annual review process. And every year, I take it more seriously because every year I realize how much more important *people* are to the company. I used to think this was a throw-away comment - but hiring, developing, promoting and rewarding the “A” players is the difference between a high-performing company, and all the other average players.

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Fountainhead

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

Note : Read this blog more as a wakeup call to vendors than as a criticism of Industry Analysts. By inadvertently playing into analysts’ narrow definition of products and categories, vendors can become distracted from their real goal – pursuing meaningful, valuable, and unique innovation. Prologue Industry analysts have an important job in the technology industry: To help customers better understand trends, technologies, and vendors, so they can make better, more confident purchasing decisions.

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Fountainhead

JANUARY 6, 2020

At the intersection of product marketing and product development is constructing a “data flywheel” business model I recently found myself speaking with a number of companies - in completely different industries - yet all expressing the same essential strategy: We’d like to make our product more valuable - and more difficult to duplicate - by making it constantly learn from our customers.

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Fountainhead

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

Product Marketing is a highly-networked function with multiple internal touchpoints that need to be actively developed and curated In the tech/software world, I’m often asked how best to scale the Product Marketing function and how to make it a highly performing function in a growing organization. Really great product marketers are masters of understanding the problems their products solve, positioning those products, identifying ideal buyers and personas, and knowing the overall market.

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Fountainhead

NOVEMBER 8, 2019

“If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.” ~ W. Edwards Deming When in business school, I had the honor of meeting W Edwards Deming while taking a class on operations management. Deming literally wrote the book on quality and process control, and is known for his 14 Points of Total Quality Management. But only when I entered the realm of product marketing did I realize that many of Deming’s principles can directly apply to marketing process quality

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Fountainhead

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

“Can you please share your roadmap?” “What are your plans to engineer feature xxx?" “Great product, but does your vision match ours?” I've received these questions all the time, from customers, partners, and analysts. When leading Product Marketing at an open source software vendor, I felt it antithetical to be open and transparent about code, financials and priorities - but not about our actual product roadmaps.

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Fountainhead

DECEMBER 8, 2018

I’ve taken a bit of hiatus from blogging as I’ve settled-into my new gig at WSO2. But I’m back with a career and social observation that applies to everyone. This past week – partly by chance, partly by design – I’ve had lunch/coffee with A CEO / Serial entrepreneur looking for marketing guidance on his latest venture A college alum reaching-out for an informational interview A product marketing leader wanting to share professional experiences It’s been an interesting set of wide-ranging convers

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Fountainhead

MAY 1, 2018

The Integration and API Management markets are growing, expanding in both popularity and use. Enterprise App integration will surpass $33b by 2020, and other markets like iPaaS and Data Integration are growing at double-digit CAGRs. Enablers, such as containers and serverless technologies are only accelerating the move toward increased disaggregation of applications.

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Fountainhead

MARCH 15, 2018

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Fountainhead

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Transforming IT from engineers and builders. to assemblers and integrators Preface About 5 years ago, I wrote a GigaOm article, The CIO as the IT Supply Chain Manager. The focus was how cloud services would transform how CIOs shifted from Technology Builders to become Service Assemblers. This concept is now more relevant than ever – with 30+ vendors offering API management products, Integration Platforms as a Service (iPaaS), Serverless functions and containerized microservices.

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Fountainhead

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

Why marketers fail to focus on industry-specific buyers I was recently speaking with 2 CEOs of leading-edge technology companies about how they go-to-market. One is a brilliant open-source software firm, the other a groundbreaking virtual networking startup. When I asked them what their industry marketing approach would be, each essentially said “I don't need that – we have a horizontal technology.

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Fountainhead

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

How the major vendors are vying for hybrid cloud dominance Over the past few years it’s been an exciting show to see the Big 3 cloud providers jockey for strategic dominance, each with a different approach. As an IT professional, it’s useful to understand each of these in context as you try to determine which horse(s) to ride and what bets to make. To recap how I’ve been tracking some of the evolution: In Part I (back in 2013) we observed AWS experimenting with expansion by reaching down into th

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 19, 2017

9 Things every marketer should know before they introduce a new technology At some point in their career, most technologists think they have the “next big thing”, a product or technology that stands out uniquely from anything else on the market. In fact, it’s so great that it deserves to be a new category in-and-of itself. Now, if you’re a reasonably-seasoned marketer, your initial response to this is “They first need to properly price and position the technology so that it solves a well-defined

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 9, 2017

A version of this post was originally published to Citrix Blogs How Citrix Cloud services are adding to IT’s business value The role of the CIO – indeed for of all of IT – is changing. Jobs that used to be tactical engineering and integration of technology are morphing into strategic positions that instead integrate external services. As I’ve observed in the past, CIOs are transforming IT supply chain managers , and it’s happening in the digital workspace market now more than ever.

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 9, 2017

This post originally published on Citrix Blogs The desktop-centric world is dead. Here’s why — and how — it will be replaced. When industries shift very slowly, sometimes the most significant changes go completely unnoticed. For example, consider how the notion of the “desktop is your workspace” is pretty much becoming irrelevant (if you disagree, read on).

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 5, 2017

Originally published on Citrix Blogs. What makes your phone your phone? Or, for that matter, what makes your desktop, your laptop or your tablet yours ? After all, millions of people own identical hardware/software configurations of iPhones, Android-based phones, tablets, laptops and other devices. The answer lies in two defining aspects of each device: The user’s data that is locally-stored, and the user’s personalization information.

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 5, 2017

For years, the “virtual PC” has been the dream of users and corporations alike. After all, why do millions of us lug around a laptop with our Windows desktop stuck to it? Why do we risk theft, loss or damage to valuable data when our entire workspace — and data – could instead live in the cloud and be accessed from anywhere by any of our devices…. [ This is a re-post of my Blog on Wired Innovation Insights.

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 5, 2017

Originally published on Citrix Blogs As I mentioned in Part 1 of this Blog, “how big is the cloud-hosted desktop market?” is still the top inquiry I get from our Citrix Service Provider ( CSP ) partners looking to enter the market. In that first post I outlined some of the approaches I take to describe the growing size of this market. In this post, I want to offer additional data that Service Providers can use when justifying investments of IP and capital for ventures into cloud-hosted desktops.

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 5, 2017

Originally published on Citrix Blogs Without question, “How big is the hosted desktop market” is the top inquiry I get from our Citrix Service Provider ( CSP ) partners. Our thousands of global partners are constantly making investments in infrastructure, marketing, business operations and sales. And frequently they are going to their board (and sometimes to external investors) for funding to chase the high-margin, high-value hosted desktop market.

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Fountainhead

JUNE 7, 2015

I rarely do this. but follows is a completely unsolicited recommendation of a fantastic idea for San Francisco residents - and tourists - alike. If you've ever driven just north of Sausalito on RT 101, you've probably noticed Sea Plane Adventures , right on the water, near exit 445. Well, pretty randomly I met the owner, Aaron Singer, the owner (and one of their pilots) So when he mentioned he ran the company (and I put 2+2 together) I realized that I had to find an excuse to try this out Shortl

Company 100

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 21, 2014

'The term “DaaS” is often synonymous with a “raw desktop in the sky”. But that’s a only like getting a new laptop… just an OS and maybe some antivirus. The rest of the set-up and customization is up to you. Meh. What lines-of-business really want are “ business-ready desktops “, customized, optimized and supported for a company’s industry and specific use cases.

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Fountainhead

MARCH 4, 2014

'A day doesn’t pass that I find myself explaining why DaaS isn’t synonymous with VDI – and neither term does justice to the real range of value possible. Both end-users and service providers have a preconceived notion that DaaS simply means delivery of a “desktop”. But that simplistic VDI-style mindset (and desktop-only mindset) doesn’t describe the real range of services possible.

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Mobile 138

Fountainhead

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

'A few weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking with a number of our Citrix Service Providers at Citrix Summit in Orlando. There is no doubt in my mind that the Managed Services industry is shifting… away from commodity services (dedicated servers, websites, Exchange mailboxes) and toward more holistic, higher-value hosting and outsourcing services.

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 29, 2013

'Earlier in March I penned a blog titled A Tale of Two Cloud Strategies and observed the two opposing cloud strategies of VMware vs. AWS. VMware, with its strength in the enterprise, building presence in the public cloud -- and AWS with de facto dominance in the public cloud, working inroads into the enterprise. In my closing paragraph I noted These will be extraordinary strategies to observe over time.

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 15, 2013

'By now you may have heard of a new entrant into the Desktop-as-a-Service market, with VMware buying Desktone. While I applaud the move that will help mature the market , I have to add some sobriety to their party atmosphere. Technology alone does not sell product - especially where the Managed Service Provider (MSP) channel is involved. Putting it Bluntly - Support the Business!

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Fountainhead

OCTOBER 15, 2013

'New Entrant VMware Will Raise Awareness If you look at Gartner Research''s 2013 Hype Cycle for IT Infrastructure and Outsourcing Services , you''ll find Hosted Virtual Desktops (HVDs) at the very peak of hype this year, outdistancing all other technologies. For years HVDs were considered a niche technology, where an outsourcing provider (typically a Managed Service Provider or MSP) delivers virtualized desktops from an external source.

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Fountainhead

AUGUST 20, 2013

'Managed service providers know they want to offer exemplary customer-focused hosted services including apps and hosted desktops. But these firms (players ranging from niche players to global Telcos) also all struggle with the same questions: What are the right services to lead with? What customer sizes should I pursue in what markets? Does market geography matter?

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Fountainhead

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

'skip to main | skip to sidebar. Fountainhead. Insights into Data Center Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing. Friday, February 13, 2009. Join me at NYCs cloud computing expo. Yours-truly will be one of the speakers at the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in NY March 30-April 1, 2009. They have a very awesome agenda , including a keynote from Werner Vogels, Amazons CTO.

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Fountainhead

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

'skip to main | skip to sidebar. Fountainhead. Insights into Data Center Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing. Friday, February 13, 2009. "California" is deja vu all over again. Just in case you want a "preview" of what Cisco is expected to announce on March 16th, you might want to compare their unified computing model to Egeneras Infrastructure Orchestration technology it has been shipping for about 7 years.

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Fountainhead

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

'skip to main | skip to sidebar. Fountainhead. Insights into Data Center Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing. Monday, February 23, 2009. Correcting computings wrongs - road to recovery? As brilliant as the first microcomputer architects were, there were some early design principles that, as the law of unintended consequences outlines, have seriously hamstrung enterprise computing for years.

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Fountainhead

MARCH 3, 2009

'skip to main | skip to sidebar. Fountainhead. Insights into Data Center Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing. Tuesday, March 3, 2009. ITs Blind Spots in the data center. A few weeks ago I wrote about where IT Ops might be missing-the-boat regarding implicit assumptions were making as an industry. I called these the " big blind spots ".

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Fountainhead

MARCH 3, 2009

'skip to main | skip to sidebar. Fountainhead. Insights into Data Center Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing. Tuesday, March 3, 2009. Egenera PAN now available on Dell blades. Since about 2001, Egenera has been selling its high-end hardware/software combination that unified re-purposing of physical and virtual servers. It combined super-high-performance blades, with their PAN Manager software.

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Fountainhead

MARCH 5, 2009

'skip to main | skip to sidebar. Fountainhead. Insights into Data Center Infrastructure, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing. Thursday, March 5, 2009. What if software virtualization is the tip of the iceberg? Yesterday I attended the IDC Directions conference in San Jose. Chock-full of great presentations, networking and predictions, topped-off with a closing keynote from Nick Carr on The Big Switch.

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