| Bob,
I appreciate your recognition of Bob Moline in this forum! He is a
valued addition to my team.
Perhaps there is something on which you can advise us to promote our
mutual success --
A great deal of what we do in ISA Engineering involves Digital
distribution of ISV software. The BASISplus project that Bob is
working on is a good example.
Our past experience has been that, even when we have a distribution
agreement, our field people may continue to directly involve an ISV in
a cooperative sale rather than selling the software as our own. This
is especially true for complex products such as BASISplus. We are not
being critical of this; we understand that building expertise in any
product requires a significant investment in time and people.
We believe, however, that under the NMS and in today's market we must
figure out a way to succeed with the software distribution model. The
cooperative sell does not provide Digital with a share of ISV software
revenue, we do not have enough applications of our own to satisfy all
market needs, and there's not enough margin in hardware these days to
fully support a company of our size. Customers want Digital to be the
focal point for the entire solution. They are happy with ISV software
as long as we will support it.
In Bob's project, we have proposed starting with a simple MIDAS
arrangement, where we make a minimal investment but can begin to get a
share the ISV software sale. We want to evolve this to a full DDS or
VAR status, where Digital assumes full responsibility for the product
from pre-sales to post-sales support. We are trying to define
milestones along the way where Digital will continue to build revenue
share.
This process will obviously take time, but we are making the investment
on this end to try to make it succeed. We have work planned over the
next year to integrate ISV software into complete solutions and to
develop the services required to help Digital become self-sufficient on
at least some subset of applications sales.
My summary questions are --
Do we all agree that Digital must aggressively increase the focus on
software and related services as a major component of our revenue
stream and that obtaining Digital revenue from ISV software is a key
component of this?
If so, how can our group help the field succeed with getting an
increasing share of revenue from ISV applications? How can we make it
easier to migrate from cooperative sales to one of Digital ownership?
Bob Moline and I welcome all thoughts on this, either in this forum,
via electronic mail, or by phone.
Gene Kusekoski
Manager, Document Management Systems
ISA Engineering
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