If You Want the Truth, Trust the Techie!

Over the years I spent in IT administration and as an IT manager, you often learn the hard way about technology implementations. Products over-promise and sales people often under-deliver. And if you really want to know how good a product is, talk to an engineer or support person who knows the product intimately! Sometimes I was the tech person and I would be cornered by one of the business folks to get to the truth of the matter. Techies don't think in shades of gray, it's pretty black and white and binary for us. Truth is our mantra and we're not very good liars, white or otherwise.

Now that I've moved into the marketing side of the world, I'll admit that my speech has become quite flowery and yes, I certainly do see shades of gray now. But not always in a bad way! And there are definitely some lessons I learned on the tech side that have been applicable to my marketing activities and philosophy. Going back many years ago, I was working as a Senior IT Analyst for a large specialty retailer out in San Francisco. We had a monitoring tool deployed called Sitescope that was extremely reliable, flexible and accurate. In comes a team of consultants from Deloitte on a technology project and they unfortunately, recommend deploying an enterprise management system (EMS), a la HP, IBM, CA or BMC software. Budget is limited (about 100K), we have our check-box list and end up with two primary EMS candidates. Time to bring in the main players for some testing!

Company 1 comes in for their one week onsite trial to set up a test-bed. They bring in a slew of consultants, all dressed sharply in blue suits. I get introduced to each one over the course of the week, even though I really have no understanding of their importance and role with regards to the onsite trial. Over time, the sales rep lets me know that he has a VERY comfortable relationship with our VP of IT (golf buddies) and promises to take care of everything for a quarter million. Of course, even with all these suits and brainpower, there's nothing to show for at the end of the one week implementation. No integration between tools, no data being collected, agents crashing on machines, the single pane of glass isn't showing much, not a very good show.

Company 2 sends one youngish Solutions Architect. He installs the product and has it running and collecting data in two hours. We spend the next day and a half going over my questions and concerns. Integration with our existing tools, deploying agents to our AIX platforms and Oracle DB's. Review of tech resources and maintenance questions. We reviewed pricing and came up with a solution for a bare-bones deployment with a small consulting package attached. And after 48 hours Sergey is done and traveling to his next client. Can you guess which product I went with?

Understand that I personally wanted to extend our existing monitoring platform but was over-ridden based upon the consultant's recommendations. I had concerns over both tested EMS systems and the political ramifications over deploying an enterprise tool in our environment. But in the end I was in the mode of risk mitigation with my EMS project. I HAD to make a decision, even if the project would be swimming upstream (limited budget, political concerns). So I sat down with my VP and carefully showed him our existing monitoring platform and carefully laid out the results of the two trials. I made it very clear that Company 1 had failed to show any significant progress or met their promises and that a technology implementation with them would be very high-risk. He accepted my recommendation and we did the purchase and deployment with Company 2.

So what's the takeaway? That technology buyers and decision-makers come at all different levels and are often, driven by risk management. While Company 1 thought they had a done deal given their relationship with the VP, there was NO way I was putting my job on the line by choosing a platform that was driven by political relationships, sales-speak and smoke and mirrors. My relationship with sales reps were driven by my primary need to get access to pricing information and technical resources where the truth could be uncovered. And while the sales reps may drive the deal for the final 20% of the purchase process, the other 80% of the real legwork was done online through individual research and with their tech resources.

Enterprise IT buyers and decision-makers are bright people and more than capable of seeing through traditional marketing efforts, CTA's and the transactional nature of sales relationships. They're busy people and can sometimes barely keep their heads above water, fighting fires and keeping their businesses running. Their technology purchases must bring some level of reassurance to their world and that reassurance can be delivered through your tech resources, online information and forums. Developing that trust and re-assurance with your decision-makers through easily accessible, unbiased information is key to influencing them and the process properly. And there's no better to way to deliver that information then through the mouths of one techie to another to keep things real. Plus just maybe a LITTLE bit of marketing...

Google+, A Social Media Contender and More

While Facebook may be the 800+ pound gorilla in the social networking and media arena, it would never be wise to count out Google! Recently Google rolled out their latest social networking effort, Google+ and after dabbling with it a bit, I am impressed. It's an incomplete effort but one that does a nice job integrating several Google services and doing so with a clean, uncluttered interface. On top of Google+ is an aggregator bar that gives you access to your Gmail, Calendar, Documents and more. The rest of the interface looks remarkably similar to Facebook with chat/messaging on the left and your network updates stream down the center. One key difference for Google+ is the ability to create "circles" of people allow you to control sharing and viewing of information. Similar to twitter lists, circles give you the ability to segment your updates based upon the intimacy and type of social relationship you have with people.

Status updates are identical to Facebook with text, pictures, videos, weblinks and location (comparable to Facebook places). "+1's" are available as an alternative to Facebook likes, allowing you to interact and recommend items. While Gchat messaging plays a central role in Google+, they've also added hangouts which allow for group webcam sessions. Your webcam sessions now become part of a stream that your circles can take part in, pretty cool! Sparks are also available, topical and special interest feeds of articles culled from the web and blogs.

One additional feature I really like is Google+'s Data Liberation option which allows you to download copies of the status update streams, Picasa photos and contacts in your circle. With Facebook, all your information is mostly locked up in the cloud. Google+ has a mobile app only available on Android (as expected) but I imagine they may some day port an app for iPhone. Some glaring gaps include a lack of events and business pages in Google+ And while there is pretty tight integration with Gchat, there is little to none with Gmail which is a bit surprising.

Perhaps if Google had delivered this effort a couple of years back, it could have made significant inroads on Facebook. But given the weight of Facebook's massive network and user base, even the best service is going to have a difficult time making headway. For those who already spend significant time on Facebook, do you really have additional cycles to explore on Google+? But a definite +1 for Google+, competition is always a good thing whether you're talking about social networking, marketing or business in general...