Web sites of community-driven Open Source project are gradually becoming more professional and “marketing savvy” in their presentation. Earlier, many of these sites would be presented in a rather technical style, with lots of code and API examples and basic design. This was of course done deliberately, with the idea of highlighting technical benefits and thereby capturing the attention of developers who would then become interested in, and contribute to, the project.

However, this has begun to change. Many Open Source projects are now dialing back the technical approach, focusing instead on a more professional overview of the project and clear categorization of content for users, developers and partners. In other words, these projects have now matured (or hope to mature) to the point where they also wish to gain traction with other members of the Open Source community, such as end-users or companies who might want to partner with or sponsor the project.

Tech Talk vs. Marketing Lingo

To illustrate what I mean, let’s compare the sites of two popular CMS projects, TYPO3 and Midgard. Both are currently in the process of relaunching their websites, which makes it easy to analyze how their marketing and communications has developed over time.

Midgard Web site as of today.

Relaunch of Midgard Web site (under development).

Midgard’s Web site is all about the code. For example, the home page focuses on developer benefits of Midgard, such as its rapid development tools for Web services and its data sharing capabilities. The home page also specifies the technologies used by Midgard, and provides links to developer tools such as the source code repository, issue tracker, mailing lists and other developer tools. Even the items in the news feed mostly focus on recent software releases.

In short, this is a site by developers and for developers, and while it does provide some information for other members of the community, it’s the developer focus that stands out most strongly.

TYPO3.org Web site as of today.

Relaunch of typo3.org (under development).

TYPO3′s Web site is less developer-oriented and broader and more inclusive in its scope (disclaimer: my company Initmarketing has previously worked with TYPO3, although not on its Website). Web site content is clearly categorized for users, developers, decision-makers and community members; this offers a way for TYPO3 to position itself appropriately for each class of visitor. The navigation shows the different entry points into the project – for example, as an extension developer, writer, translator, sponsor – and there’s also an extension repository, which also serves a barometer of project activity.

In short, although this is an Open Source project that hopes to attract community developers, it moves the code and technical details one level down so that it is also attractive to other community members, such as end-users, and corporate sponsors. Note that it’s not only the messaging though, it’s also the visual design where they differ and which makes the new TYPO3 website appear more professional. Needless to say that this all has a huge impact on how the two brands will be perceived by prospective users.

GNOME 3.0 microsite.

Another example of this marketing-oriented trend can be seen on the new GNOME 3.0 Web site. It’s attractively presented, and its home page focuses almost exclusively on end-user benefits … even though it’s obviously a community-driven software project that also needs to attract developers. As with TYPO3, the idea here seems to be to make the project more accessible, by highlighting non-technical benefits and thereby increasing end-user adoption. And that’s very much “marketing” thinking!

Some Lessons

If you have an Open Source project, there are some lessons in this for you.

For your project to succeed, you must attract the attention of the community. While you certainly need developers to adopt your project, it’s also important that you cater to end-users, because

1. the more you highlight user and business benefits,
2. the more potential users will get the impression that your community understands their needs and
3. the more successful the project is in the user space,
4. the more motivated developers are to contribute.

Marketing is useful here, because that’s what it’s good at: presenting and positioning your project in the best possible light to different user segments.

This doesn’t mean that your project site shouldn’t display any code; rather, it means that the code needn’t be up-front, but can be located a level or two down in the navigation tree, perhaps in a specific section for developers.

At the same time, there are also companies who might want to sponsor your project, or individuals who might want to contribute to it with money or time donations. Don’t ignore these user segments; instead, make sure that your project site has useful information for all of them – for example, ways to contribute, benefits of becoming a sponsor, areas where non-programming help is needed – and make sure they feel valued and necessary to the overall success of the project.

The more inclusive and all-rounded your project Web site, the more likely you are to achieve broad marketplace adoption … and that’s where the rewards really lie!

No Positioning?

You might have noticed by looking at the screenshots that none of the websites have a tagline or slogan in the header – except for the current Midgard site, which indicates the product category: “Open Source Content Management Framework”. This means that all of the above projects neglect a strong opportunity for a unique positioning and branding.

I wonder what are the reasons? Is it too hard for community-driven projects to decide on the positioning or a tagline because the software is being used in very different ways? Or because the community’s decision-making processes are ineffective? Or does the community believe that its project is widely known and thus won’t need a tagline?

Perhaps this is a field where OSS projects still need to mature marketing-wise.

One of the great things about Open Source software, is its ability to significantly cut the length and expense of the sales process, by allowing prospects to “self-qualify” themselves for the product offering. Simply put, because an Open Source software product is freely available for download, potential users can get it, try it out, and decide for themselves whether it works for them. If it does, they can then decide to approach the vendor for additional services or technical support.

From the Open Source vendor’s perspective, this is a great place to be, because it’s getting a constant stream of leads which are (a) already educated about the product and (b) interested in pursuing a commercial relationship. This makes things much easier for the vendor’s sales people, because they typically need to do far less work in convincing the prospect of the suitability of the product and they can instead focus on meeting specific requirements and closing the deal. In summary, a shorter sales cycle for the vendor and clearer expectations/less disappointment for the customer.

Understand the Buying Process (and the Buyer)

The trick to this, of course, is to ensure that prospects have enough information to self-qualify. And this is not simply a matter of “provide a download link and they will do the rest”. For an Open Source vendor to fully exploit the informational advantages of Open Source, it needs to make sure that potential customers have all the information they need to satisfy their questions and concerns independently. And so, it is necessary to prepare and make available different types of marketing collateral for each stage of the buyer decision process.

There are two important aspects to consider here.

1. The stage of the buying process

The typical buying process consists of need identification, research, evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase evaluation. These stages are performed sequentially, and the prospect’s information requirements change from one stage to another.

For example, in the first and second phases, the prospect may have a wide range of options, but as the evaluation progresses, the field is whittled down to a few likely candidates. Correspondingly, the granularity of detail required also increases: for example, in the first two stages, the prospect may only be interested in (say) the platform and integration requirements, but once the main candidates are identified, the prospect will examine each in detail to understand the relative benefits of each. This is clearly seen in the following simple diagram.

2. The status of the buyer

The status of the buyer must also be considered. In small firms, the economic buyer (the one who actually pays for the product) and the decision maker (the one who takes a final purchase decision) might be one and the same. However, in larger organizations, the decision maker might be a developer, while the economic buyer might be a business manager or CFO. The information provided must be correctly targeted to the buyer’s status within the organization.

For example, consider the evaluation stage. At this point, a developer is keenly interested in the technical benefits of the product and so would gain maximum value from technical white papers, sample code, technical presentations, and other collateral that illustrate the technical capabilities of the product. However, a business manager at the same stage of the process would like to read case studies of similar deployments, white papers about collaboration features, data sheets listing service and support options, and so on.

Marketing Collateral Cheat Sheet

Here’s a quick cheat sheet, based on my experience, of what you could provide to different types of prospects to help them at each stage of the buying process:

A final question to consider: how do you actually make all this material available to prospects? The best way is through your Web site, as this offers several advantages:

• It’s the first place a prospect will visit for more information on your product/service offering.
• It’s publicly accessible, which means that sales people (yours and your partners’) can use the same collateral for direct sales.
• It’s central and 100% under your control, which ensures that updates occur in a single place and you don’t have to worry about salespeople or partners working off outdated material.

Conclusion

Open Source offers a number of advantages, and these are not restricted only to the software aspects of your product or service. By making available as much information as possible, you’re allowing potential customers to validate your offering against their needs, and giving them the tools to make an informed decision. This allows them to self-qualify or self-disqualify themselves, serving as an automatic filter and granting you the benefits of a shorter and more effective sales cycle.

All too often, companies think of branding as a one-time effort: they define the market positioning, create a brand and logo to reflect this positioning, and then take this brand into the world. All marketing activities that follow from this – advertising, public relations, promotions, customer communication – are based upon the defined brand identity. The truth is that brands develop over time and while they mature, the messaging needs to be revised.

Brands Reflect Perceptions (and Vice-Versa)

A brand is special, because it is an identity constructed in our minds and it creates an emotional as well psychological connection between the company and its customers. Each customer is likely to interpret the same brand in a subtly different manner. Thus, a brand isn’t a “one size fits all” representation of a company; rather, it is the composite of multiple individual perceptions and emotions. As Daryl Travis, in his book Emotional Marketing, notes “…a brand isn’t a brand to you until it develops an emotional connection with you.”

What many companies forget is that a brand is a living entity. Just as a brand shapes customers perceptions, it too is shaped by perceptions – both of its customers and of its staff. And as a company learns more about itself over time, as it begins to look at itself from different perspectives, its brand too must evolve and reflect this additional knowledge and intelligence.

A Few Examples

If you take a look at some software brands, you’ll clearly see this evolutionary process taking place. Here are some examples:

• Apple‘s original logo (pre-1976) depicted Sir Isaac Newton under an apple tree. However, this was soon replaced with the famous “bitten apple” silhouette, which had cleaner lines…perhaps intended to highlight’s Apple’s clean, smooth designs. Initially filled with rainbow colors, the logo has evolved into a monochrome design – first black and then the current transparent/glass version. In short, as Apple’s unique design culture has emerged and as customers have also begun to recognize (and expect) cutting-edge design from Apple, the brand has evolved to match and reflect these expectations.
• Another interesting example is SugarCRM which, back in 2004, had a tagline describing it as “commercial open source customer relationship management”. However, as time has passed and the CRM category has become well established, the company has dropped this explanatory tagline from its brand identity. The cube-shaped logo is a relatively recent addition, and perhaps is intended to represent how its product brings together different facets of information to create profiles of customer relationships.

The Evolution of Identity

A brand’s identity typically goes through the following phases, which usually manifest in the taglines you find in Website headers or advertising slogans:

1. A young brand needs to be explained, thus a category-style tagline is chosen (just like SugarCRM did in its early days, see above).
2. The brand has established itself in its category, the company has a strong identity and changes its tagline to an emotional one (think Apple’s “Think Different” slogan).
3. The brand is the leader in its category and has a high visibility, the tagline is abandoned because the brand now speaks for itself (Apple or Amazon.com nowadays).

An analogy would be to compare brands with human beings. For example, when introducing yourself, you tell the other person your name, why you are there and perhaps what you do – just like in the first phase of a young brand. The better someone knows you, the more they will be able to decide how they want to relate to you and whether to enter a (private/business) relationship. The deeper the relationship, the more important emotions become. Once you and a related group know someone really well, you won’t have to explain to the group who e.g. “Marc” is, because they know him, thus the personal brand speaks for itself.

Given that brands are constructed in our minds, this analogy is actually quite powerful, because we are social beings and the way our mind works when it relates to something is greatly influenced by how we build relationships with other human beings.

Conclusion

What does this mean for you, the Open Source vendor? Simply this: as your product and your market evolves, you need to occasionally step back to refine and focus your brand strategy. In most cases, any changes you end up making to your brand strategy will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, reflecting the changes in knowledge and perception that have accrued to the company over the preceding period. Doing this every two to three years will help ensure that your brand is relevant and in tune with the needs, expectations and perceptions of your customers and yourself. Essentially, your brand will go through different phases of its identity, just like a human being does as it grows older.

A couple of years ago I wrote about the IT culture of Europe and the market opportunity it presents for vendors of open source software. If you’re ready to take advantage of that information, here are some points American open source software vendors should consider when developing a plan to open new markets in Europe.

Read more on Wazi.

Today, more and more proprietary software vendors are choosing to go Open Source. Doing this enables them to leverage the community benefits of Open Source, shorten the sales cycle, and gain a competitive advantage over other proprietary products.

However, for those firms considering a switch to Open Source, there are some hard decisions to make with regard to their product architecture. Should they provide only a single Open Source product, and earn revenue from add-on services like support and consulting (RedHat)? Or should they adopt the Open Core model, offering their product under both Open Source and proprietary licenses (MySQL)? Or perhaps some hybrid of these two approaches?

In this post, I’ll consider two common architectures, which I’ll respectively call the “Open Core” and “Solutions” architectures.

Open Core Architecture

The term Open Core is used to describe business models where vendors offer both an Open Source “community edition” and a more fully featured, commercially licensed “enterprise edition”. MySQL is undoubtedly the most common example of this model, although it’s widely in use among other firms as well.

Typically, the enterprise edition product comes with vendor guarantees and support, thereby making it more attractive to larger enterprises. At the same time, it ensures that smaller firms and individuals, who may not require these attributes, are not excluded, as they can freely access and use the community edition of the product, albeit without any guarantees.

Solutions Architecture

Under the Solutions Architecture, a vendor offers separate packages or distributions of the same Open Source product, identified in terms of the functionality they add. Thus, rather than an “enterprise edition” and a “community edition”, the vendor might provide specialized offerings for different skill sets such as a “developer edition”, “database administrator edition”, “project manager edition”, and so on.

Typically, each solution comes with vendor guarantees and all the distributions are based on the same Open Source code base. This ensures interoperability and peace of mind. At the same time, this approach is economical for end-users, as they only pay for the product features that they need, and so it allows both individuals and large enterprises to participate in the product ecosystem.

Which is Better?

Given these two options, which should a firm choose? Here are some arguments to consider:

• Under the “Open Core” architecture, the vendor’s community edition may be perceived as “crippleware” lacking the more advanced features found in the enterprise edition. Users may accuse it of cynically providing a functionally limited Open Source version merely to drive sales of its commercial version. This can lead to a negative impression of the vendor, and may adversely affect its market positioning.
• At the same time, by using Open Core terminology such as “community edition” and “professional edition”, the vendor might be seen as implicitly categorizing some users as “non-professional”. Where these users are also contributing to the community, this will naturally cause friction and conflict. The Solutions Architecture, by contrast, makes no such claims and is less likely to produce an “us versus them” mindset.
• In a fragmented, highly competitive market, a vendor faces competition from multiple niche products, both proprietary and Open Source. In this situation, the Solutions approach allows the vendor to compete effectively against these specialist products, as each distribution is narrowly positioned to attract a distinct market segment.
• On the other hand, the Open Core approach is an easy sell to the enterprise market. The typical enterprise edition product will include technical support, warranties, SLAs and compatibility guarantees, all of which are critical to medium- and large-size enterprises. In general, it is also easier for a direct sales force to sell a single enterprise-focused product rather than a distribution-based product line.
• The Open Core model is already successfully in use by many firms. It therefore has the benefit of pre-existing market awareness and acceptance, and it is easy for customers to understand its nomenclature and business benefits. This simplifies the sales process, as there is less customer and salesperson education required.

Conclusion

As the above arguments make clear, there aren’t any hard and fast rules about which product architecture is “the best”. However, it’s possible to identify arguments for and against each approach, and thereby decide which one will be best suited to the firm’s specific goals and requirements. Needless to say, the final decision will have a far-reaching impact on the firm’s business model, competitive positioning and marketing strategy…and so, it should be taken after due consideration of all the relevant factors.

For a firm with an Open Source product, making the software available for no cost is a great way to build a community around it and foster bottom-up adoption. However, this is just the beginning: the firm still faces the challenge of monetizing the product, converting intangible assets such as “Open Source freedom” and “community goodwill” into real money that can be used to fund further product development and community building activities.

In a previous blog post, I discussed one possible strategy for monetization: a modules marketplace for open source products. However, this isn’t the only approach. At Initmarketing, we developed a distribution model to help identify distribution channels for commercial open source that add value and provide a way to put a price tag on elements of the commercial offerings (products, modules, and services).

Understanding The Model

This model explores three facets of distribution: product/service offering, delivery method and distribution channel:

• The Offering column lists the firm’s available market offerings. These could be different flavors of its product(s), product plug-ins and extensions, and related services such as consulting, training or technical support.
• The Delivery Method column lists all the available delivery methods for the firm’s offerings. For Open Source software, the most common method is usually online delivery, but some products and services (eg. training) may also be delivered directly at the customer’s premises. Many firms also choose to make their products available as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering.
• The Channel column describes the distribution channels available to the firm. The obvious one here is the firm’s Web site, which is typically the first place a customer will look for the Open Source product. Many firms also enter into relationships with partners (eg: OEMs or system integrators) to achieve higher distribution for their product. Finally, firms can also opt for the direct sales route, as a supplement or alternative to partner relationships.

An Example: Typical Open Core Product

The model described above becomes valuable when you begin to connect the elements in the three columns together in the context of your firm’s business model. To illustrate, consider the case of a typical Open Core product, which is available in two flavors: Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. If you were to model distribution channels for such a product, here is what it might look like:
From the above it should be clear that:

• The Community Edition is available for direct download from the firm’s Web site. It might also be available in the firm’s online shop (if present) as a free download.
• The Enterprise Edition is delivered on-premise and as a hosted offering, either directly by the firm or through partners.
• The firm also offers both commercial and free modules for the product, which are available for direct download from its Web site (free modules) and for purchase through its online shop (commercial modules). Both types of modules can also be delivered on-premise through partners or direct sales.
• Services such as consulting and technical support are available on-premise through partners and direct sales.

The above diagram represents some of the typical cases for an Open Core licensed product. For other types of business models, the diagram would change accordingly.

Base for Further Analysis

In addition to providing a birds-eye view of the current or proposed distribution strategy, this model also provides a base for further analysis. For example:

• It provides a way to identify which delivery methods and channels are most utilized, simply by looking at the number of connections, and thereby derive additional information about sales process requirements. For example:
  • Where products, modules and services can all be delivered on-premise, this imposes a requirement on sales staff to have sufficient knowledge and marketing collateral for all these offerings.
  • Where products and modules are available both for free download and purchase via the Web site, the Web site must provide corresponding information and support infrastructure (eg: payment processing, security, account management).
• It quickly identifies areas of under-utilization, which in turn represent potential opportunities for product distribution. For example, the diagram has no arrows entering or leaving the SaaS delivery method. This might be an opportunity for the firm to develop a new business model, by delivering its product as a SaaS solution for a specific market niche.

Summary

Distribution is key to getting an Open Source product into the hands of users and developers, and monetizing on top of user adoption. This model is a useful tool to add to your Open Source marketing toolkit as it provides a way to identify key distribution channels for different elements of the commercial offering, identify areas of concentration or under-utilization, and find unexploited opportunities.

I am honestly proud of what the LinuxTag Program Committee achieved. The soon-to-be-announced program for this year’s event will have 25% more talks and even very interesting ones as well.

Keynote speakers such as Larry Augustin (CEO SugarCRM, Angel Investor) and Dirk Riehle (Germany’s first professor of Open Source Software) have already been announced. There are some more who have just confirmed their attendance, but I am not allowed to name them yet (surprise, surprise).

The committee has invested a lot of time pro-bono in directly contacting OSS projects and speakers and in evaluating talk proposals. Our goal was to make sure the program will feature some of the key projects and persons, providing a mix of introductory as well as advanced topics, technical as well as business-related talks. I am sure you will appreciate the program once it has been published at www.linuxtag.org within the next couple of days.

Kudos to my fellows at the program committee and thanks for bringing me in, it’s just so much fun! Many thanks also to everyone who proposed a talk!

LinuxTag is the most important place for Linux and open source software in Europe. Last year, LinuxTag had over ten thousand attendees, and over 300 speakers. This year, the 16th LinuxTag will be June 9-12, 2010 at the Berlin Fairgrounds in Germany.

LinuxTag seeks exciting and suitable proposals for presentations in the conference tracks. The Call for Papers ends today.

I am proud to be a member of the LinuxTag Program Committee. Although a lot of proposals have already been submitted, there are some topics missing that I’d personally like to see covered. So, if you’re up for a last minute submission, get your inspiration from the following list:

• Is/was the recent economic crisis an opportunity for Open Source?
• More real-life case studies on how OSS is being used in mission-critical scenarios.
• A European or global perspective on Open Source in Public Administration.
• How to make use of Amazon EC2 or Google AppEngine with Open Source apps?
• Technical tutorials for beginners, especially for building Web apps (e.g. PHP/Ruby/Java/etc. for beginners).
• High performance Web environments with Open Source tools
• Security in the Cloud
• What’s the status of some of the regional Linux distributions?

I can’t promise that your talk will be accepted if it covered one of the above topics. The review process is of course a joint effort of the whole Program Committee. Anyway, it’s definitely worth a try. Of course, any other topic I did not think of is also highly welcome.

Go here to submit your LinuxTag proposal.

2008 was an exciting and very successful year.

I officially started my own business in February: InitMarketing, the open source marketing company. Ever since then, the InitMarketing customer base keeps growing. As of today, there are 15 paying customers including open source software vendors and associations, ranging from content management systems, e-shops to Linux distributions, from mega corporations to small start-ups. Some of them are in the FOSS business for several years, others recently started or even open sourced their formerly proprietary product. InitMarketing helped them with marketing strategy definition, community building, public relations, blog coaching, event management, creating product brochures, writing case studies and white papers and much more.

Revenues for 2008 clearly exceeded my expectations. We have been contracted for project-specific work as well as on a retainer basis. A good part of that money went to InitMarketing’s team members who have done an excellent job helping out with their special expertise on customer projects.

I am particularly proud of InitMarketing.tv, because it is first of all a lot of fun to record the video interviews about Open Source marketing. Second, the videos provide real value to those who watch them much in the spirit of Open Source communites where expertise is being shared happily. Furthermore, video recording and editing has turned into a passion and I very much enjoy extending my prosumer skills.

The goals for InitMarketing in 2009 are to double our revenues, but given the world-wide economic downturn, I am clueless if we can make it. Honestly, I wish that those claims about Open Source software doing better during a recession turn out to be true. So far, I don’t have any reasons to not believe that this self-fullilling prophecy will fullfill itself.

There are positive signs: none of our customers face any economic problems yet. Some of them even performed better than projected during the second half of 2008 … but – you know – only the paranoid survive.

Given the overall economic climate and the general bad financial situation of the U.S., I don’t want to be overly optimistic. Nevertheless, the advantages of open source software over proprietary software in times of tight budgets are obvious. The only real problem are completely cut-down budgets…

Anyway, I wish you all a 2009 that can only become better than expected, right?

It’s been quiet for a month on my Weblog due to still increasing demand for the services offered by InitMarketing. The more I am happy to be able to present some of the work we are doing for our clients.

In June, we started to work with YMC on what we labeled “marketing phase 1″. This project set out to build a completely new corporate design and identity. We re-defined the positioning and branding of YMC, re-launched their corporate website regarding visual appearance and content, created marketing collaterals and more.

About YMC

YMC is located in Switzerland. Their software is what we categorized as “Open Source Web 2.0 Content Management” and it is named Volano. Volano is based on eZ Publish and – you might have already guessed it – provides some cool Web 2.0 functionality on top of it. Volano itself is available under an Open Source license to YMC’s customers.

YMC provides support and services for Volano and currently focuses on the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). One major customer of YMC is Swiss Televsion SF where they use Volano for the website related to the daily news broadcast SF Tagesschau. A highly interesting implementation done by YMC is 029, a Web 2.0 portal where social travel booking takes place: A group of people can find the best package for joint holidays.

Corporate Design

Most of all, I am happy about the results achieved in creating a new corporate design for YMC. We started with the logo and then moved on to designing the website.

New YMC Website.

I especially do like the rings and the illustration used in the banner. The rings symbolize communities that sometimes overlap. The pieces of the rings sum up the individuals who are members of the community.

The illustration is great because it is a creative piece of art that is in sync with the banner’s claim that YMC combines spontaneity and quality in it’s Web 2.0 content management solution. Most importantly, the illustration highly differentiates YMC from other software companies, who tend to use stock photos of architectural buildings or even worse, of two business men shaking their hands.

The new corporate design also works well regarding booth designs, as this picture shows, taken at OpenExpo a few days ago:

YMC booth at OpenExpo 2008 (Credit: Andreas Heer).

The corporate design work also included the design of business cards, presentation slides, case studies, etc. and we are about to deliver the style guide to YMC.

Marketing Collaterals

We at InitMarketing assisted YMC in re-structuring and re-writing the content of www.ymc.ch to have it in sync with the more focused brand identity of YMC. We are currently in the proccess of coaching YMC when it comes to identifying and writing about thought leader topics on YMC’s corporate Weblog. Furthermore, we helped YMC in writing two case studies and delivered a case study template to them.

All this marketing work forms the basis for the public relations activities we just started for YMC.