Virtual Intelligence Briefing focuses its attention on Emerging Technology Products and Emerging Technology Vendors, so the first question that comes up is “What is an Emerging Technology Product & Vendor?”

In short, an Emerging Technology Product (ETP) fills a gap in the market, solves an unaddressed need not met by the largest vendors, it is easy to use, it is priced at a fraction of what one would expect to pay and the ETP vendor is small, nimble and knows that “the customer is always right”

Vendors that introduce emerging technology products have to make sure that the customer is always right or the product and company are doomed to fail.

When you are the new kid on the block without a plethora of customers and references, privately held, and has something that isn’t widely accepted yet, the vendor must go the extra mile and then some; the customer is always right!

The customer is always right; an example: The evaluation process should be easy and painless. Equallogic made its mark when it would provide an iSCSI SAN to a potential customer for up to 30 days and the Equallogic engineer would come on-site and install it.

Would NetApp or EMC come on-site and leave a FC SAN for 30 days and install it for free? Of course not – they didn’t have to.

What makes for a successful ETP?

• The product is new to the market and fills an easily understood gap in the marketplace
• The technology is proven and works
• The company is young, small, private and the “we will make it and they will come” theme is shelved. Sales and marketing have a key role to play.
• There is a mechanism in place to tell the founder of the company when all is not well. Sometimes the emperor has no clothes – but who wants to tell him/her that?
• Price – it must be priced low!

Fatal Mistakes that ETP Vendors Make

• They act is if they are an established Tier 1 vendor before they really are one
• They release the product before it is “ready for prime time”
• They spend too much time beating up the Tier 1 vendor or established technology in front of the potential customer. Does this every work really?
• Not doing enough market research with “REAL” buyers. There is a difference between technology development and product development. Through research with real buyers, it is paramount that you understand what problem does your product solve and does the buyer see enough value in your product that they would make a purchase within a specified time frame? Which features of your product are really needed, which ones can you get rid of and are you missing a key feature or two?
• They accelerate the development and a channel (resellers) before they should. At the beginning, the focus needs to be on direct sales in order that the customer gets the correct answers quickly and that they receive the best attention possible. It is fine of course if the vendor directs the order to be invoiced by a reseller that they are courting. This is how the reseller/channel will learn. They will learn by “shadowing” the experts and a “blue bird” sale is a great way to create an energized and motivated channel.

To develop a sales channel is critical, but don’t do it until you (the vendor ) has mastered the process first. VMware was an ETP back in 2002 – is it one now? It doesn’t fit my definition since it a large and public company and they are the leader in a marketplace that they created. Created for server virtualization on the Intel/AMD platform. Virtualization is still an emerging technology. Even server virtualization is an emerging technology – while server consolidation is mainstream, the next waves will be using virtualization for DR and the desktop.

While the pricing has to be extremely low in order for the risk/reward scale to tilt to the ETP side; it’s not just about price; example Microsoft Virtual Server

Four years ago, an Equallogic SAN was ½ the price of an EMC FC SAN and included the entire software suite at no cost. This was compelling. The ETP vendor Equallogic has dragged, kicking and screaming, FC leaders into the ISCSI market.

Before closing this article , here are few companies that we are keeping an eye on:

GreenBytes - next generation data deduplication. It is ½ the price of the market leader with a faster, more expandable, energy efficient offering.

Virtual Computer – desktop virtualization & PC lifecycle management

AutoVirt – file virtualization, data management, copying & replication, global name space

Akorri - Cross-domain virtual infrastructure management software ; it solves some of the nagging problems that can be created by server virtualization once the virtual machines are in production

InMage Systems – CDP based disaster recovery product that offers near zero recovery time and recovery point objectives. Works in a heterogeneous storage environment ; a compelling alternative to SAN based replication.

InfoFinder – enterprise or business search for the mid-market; find any document in under a second , this should give potential buyers of Google appliance or Microsoft FAST wallet relief and it installs in an hour or so.