Services or Products

I've been thinking about this topic for several weeks now, and have reached a conclusion. Or, rather, it may be better to say I've reached a decision -- and now I have a road to follow, many questions to ask and answer, many further decisions to make, and lots of actions that need to be done -- which will all hopefully lead to a conclusion that validates my decision.

I have been looking at the market for collaboration a lot lately. Of course I have been zeroing in on IBM and the Notes and Domino segment of the market in much of my thinking, but I've also been trying to broaden my consideration a little bit by thinking about Groove, KubiSoft, blogging, and various other things. I've been looking at the services market around collaboration products, which used to be a slam-dunk market for easy money, but is no longer. I hear IBM talking constantly about contextual collaboration. I see momentum both in and out of IBM moving away from the "fat client" as the locus of collaboration. I wonder where the mass services market is in the world of QuickPlace, Groove, Kubi, and blogging tools.

I see that IBM is all about WebSphere and Portal now... that despite the talk about spending a billion dollars on Lotus, they are not hiring in Westford or Cambridge, which leads to the conclusion that they are putting more resources into non-Domino collaboration strategies for the long term than they are into Domino. This is not to cast judgement about whether this is good or bad, right or wrong This is just an observation of something that I think I must accept as fact and factor into my own business strategies.

Seeing what I do in the market and at IBM, I realize that it is time for me to adapt in some way. The market is looking in directions that I haven't been until recently. Looking more closely at how IBM is transforming itself into a services company, and who their bread-and-butter services customers are, I have to consider whether they will create the kind of products that generate massive demand for small providers of the kinds of services that I love to provide, and I have doubts. Serious doubts.

Knowing that it is time to adapt, but doubting that taking the plunge into J2EE-based collaboration on the services will be a viable road to follow as a small consultancy, I realize that I have to change one of the fundamental aspects of my business. I have to consider changing the small aspect, or the consultancy aspect.

The decision I have come to is that it is time to explore the products business. Staying small is not just what I want for my business. Given the economy right now, it's what I have to do. I have had product ideas in the past -- quite a few of them actually, but never pursued them. I am dusting a few of the better ones off and thinking of some new ones. I am going to go through a fairly serious process of re-thinking my business -- from the name on down, and building some products that I can sell to customers in the collaboration market.

Stay tuned. I'll be wrestling with many questions shortly, and I'll do my best to find ways to air them without compromising the intellectual property concerns that (naturally) come with the territory of product development.