2010: support your trade group

If you’d asked me a year ago: ‘Should I support a trade group?’ my answer would likely have been ‘Doubtful.’ Trade groups tend to have one agenda – fighting their corner – and very often that’s to the detriment of what they’re trying to achieve. Why? Because it is a single view that doesn’t necessarily reflect the needs of those they’re trying to influence or reach. The last few weeks have seen me radically change that position. Here’s why.

Observant readers will have noticed I’ve been on something of a tear around ‘cloud.’ I believe that as currently marketed, ‘cloud’ is confusing, over hyped and not helpful to the business buyer. OK – there is a sea change in the way technology is delivered and it rests with many (but not necessarily all) services moving to the Internet. Better economics, the potential for meaningful collaboration and opportunities to innovate are all good things that the ‘new’ promises. But years of technology vendors over claiming and under delivering leave many understandably sceptical.

There is a flip side. Buyers raise legitimate concerns around security in the broadest sense, they want clarity about the types of application they can move to the internet now, those they can leave until later and everything in between. They want to know more about the real economics and all the while the hype machine seems like it’s revved at full blast supported by an often uncritical media.

The last year has seen the emergence of Intellect SaaS Group and EuroCloud along with the re-emergence of BASDA and its Cloud-SIG as three groups around which vendors might cluster. Each has a slightly different agenda but in essence they’re acting as vendor trade groups. They will therefore align with the most friendly media. That is to be expected.

In the past, trade groups have rarely managed to get on with one another and often produce little of meaning to the buyer. I recall some years back when IFRS came in. BASDA members poo-poo’d it saying buyers weren’t asking. The same went for XBRL. It’s the wrong approach. On the other hand, I recall BASDA producing a standard that predates current web apps that allowed machine to machine interactions. Despite being something I thought held tremendous promise, it didn’t take off. Sometimes you just can’t win.

Buyers depend on what they read in order to gain any understanding of what is on offer. Today, those same buyers are talking among themselves in ways we could never envisage just five years ago. There is the potential for a mismatch I see in the poorly articulated explanations of issues that buyers find pressing.

Today, I’d argue that while the research indicates no-one is asking for ‘cloud anything’ buyers do understand there are things they can usefully learn about internet based computing. But…if the goodness that internet apps can deliver is to be realized then vendors need to be far more responsible in what I see as something of a Wild West landscape.

In conversations I’ve had with people representing those groups, it has become clear they agree with the broad sentiment outlined here. I’m seeing them talk to one another in a manner that suggests collaboration is very much on the agenda. There are things going on among those groups that will be good for buyers and sellers in 2010 but about which I’d rather say nothing until I see results. I am more hopeful of good things coming out of these groups than at any time in the last 20 years. All of which means that rather than vendors sitting on the outside or paying lip service, I believe they should make a choice. Join one or more of the groups and see what is being done. Engage actively. Everyone will win. And especially buyers.

Tagged as: XBRL