To predict future, look at the past

July 20, 2010

Conference Room, Fast growing large enterprise software vendor

Executive Strategy Meeting.

P: Lets get started. On the agenda today is Cloud. I need to provide an update to the board on our strategy. I have asked J to take lead in analyzing the market and to educate us. Take it away J.

J: Thanks P. Everyone, Cloud is basically being able to purchase some storage and few VMs on-demand. Its right now being used by some developers due to its fanciness. Its really not of a concern to enterprise customers.

K: But, why do people keep talking about it?

J: Well, its hype right now. What people don’t realize is that we can do the same thing with our current products. Even better, we can help customers do this in their own data centers.

K: Then, why arent our customers already doing cloud with our products?

J: I think its fair to say we haven’t marketed our capabilities well. We need to push the automation features to our customers harder.

P: I agree.

K: Does Cloud make things easy?

J: Not actually, many don’t know how to create a storage bucket and store objects in them or how to manage VMs in this “Cloud”. There is also lot of uncertainty around security. It requires retraining staff.

K: Then, why are people using it?

J: Not many are using it, its just people that like bleeding edge.

P: Do we need to get into this market?

J: We can, but the reality is that this Cloud market is very immature. There are not too many tools that exist for it. Even those that exist are very immature. I think what we offer is far superior to Cloud. Our customers can do this without any disruption to their data centers, staff and processes. I would say we should let companies like Amazon experiment with this and fail. Not even Google wants to touch this right now.

P: So, what does the Total Addressable Market look like for Cloud?

J: I am not sure there really is a market for Cloud. Its a feature of virtualization. I guess we can say TAM for Cloud is same as TAM for virtualization. But, I think Cloud is really a feature, not a product or a market.

K: I agree, we can do this far better with our current products, lets add couple more features to do Runbook automation and we will leapfrog everyone else.

P: ok, we should focus more on marketing our automation features.

J: Just to make sure we aren’t missing anything, I called all our largest customers. None of them are even looking at “Cloud”. They all think its a toy.

P,K: Yeah, no one except over hyped analysts and people without real skills are talking about it, but lets just have a small team keep looking at it.

J: Yeah, sure.

P: Anyone wants to go for a bike ride? Canada Road is closed to automobiles today, lets hit it.

Sept 20, 2016

Conference Room, Fast growing cloud vendor

Executive Strategy Meeting

D: Lets get started. On the agenda today is serverless. I need to provide an update to the board on our strategy. I have asked B to take lead in analyzing the market, its impact on our company, what should our tactical and strategic response be. Take it away B.

B: Thanks D. Everyone, Serverless is basically being able to run some Functions on the Cloud without worrying about VMs etc. Its right now being used by some developers due to its fanciness. Its really not of a concern to enterprise customers,whom we need to convince that we are legit.

K: But, why do people keep talking about it?

B: Well, its hype right now. What people don’t realize is that we can do the same thing with our current products. Even better, we can help customers do it with our product that they already run their apps on.

K: Then, why arent our customers doing serverless?

B: I think its fair to say we haven’t marketed our capabilities well, we need to push the app execution features to our customers harder.

<< After 20 minutes of intense discussion>>

D: Anyone wants to grab lunch? I keep hearing great things about the new cafeteria that opened last week — they have Kale Burgers.

K, B: Sure

Thoughts?