Applying open source business models and development methodologies to middleware have seen increasing popularity in recent years. Needless to say, the model has worked with notable companies such as JBoss, Red Hat, Pentaho, Hyperic, and others. Of course, it takes more than just an open source business model to stay in business. These companies all needed sales to close deals, and in turn, sales needed marketing to provide qualified leads. One thing all of these companies have in common is efficient marketing and sales teams, powered by Demand Generation Technology. The use of demand generation, allowed these companies to scale quickly by providing increased ROI in marketing and increased efficiency in sales, via automation of the lead qualification and nurturing process. In essence, sales personnel aren't wasting their time on cold leads, and marketing isn't wasting time trying to corral leads that "leak" out of the sales funnel.
I recently wrote an article that mentions why Open Source Companies are uniquely positioned for maximizing demand generation technologies. You can see the article here. In essence, these companies have been able to identify and "upsell" their community in to their support, training, and consulting services. The unique position of OSS companies relying heavily on their community, makes demand generation a high-value proposition for them, and a near-necessity to any OSS company wishing to tap in to its user-base.
If you don't believe or don't know of the power of automating your marketing and sales efforts through demand generation, simply look around at the successful batch of open source companies, and you'll see them using it, or on the brink of implementing it. Proof enough? ;-)
LoopFuse, is an open source company, founded by myself and Tom Elrod. After working for years at JBoss and with close to a decade of email marketing experience under our belt, we saw first-hand what demand generation could do when applied to an OSS business. Oddly enough, when we looked across the landscape, all we saw were a hand-full of proprietary players, that we felt were charging way too much for the value they were providing. Applying what we have learned over the years with regards to increasing marketing and sales efficiency, open source business models, and enterprise-class software development, we were certain we could be a disruptive force in this market, innovating faster, providing a complete services offering, and helping expand the market, so "the masses" could benefit from this critical technology that is increasingly becoming a necessity to those wanting to grow their businesses. Additionally, leveraging an open source business model allows us to innovate at a faster-pace than our proprietary competitors and keep our costs low - passing on those savings to our customers.
With that being said, we have recently released our first version of "One View", our OSS demand generation solution. It is distributed under the GPL, complemented by an Enterprise Edition that is part of our ASP, or SaaS, offering.
Additionally, we will be launching even more enterprise-level features in our second version, due in May 22 (Yes, we move fast). Just in time, for OSBC, where we will have a shiny booth and you can watch me yap away during our presentation, about how implementing LoopFuse's demand generation solution is painless, and frankly, a no-brainer. ;-)
Roy Russo
2 comments:
Congratulations to you and Tom for the hard work. Looking at the website, looks like you've made good progress.
Sounds interesting and exciting. Any comparison to the competition forthcoming? Particularly the expensive one that starts with an E. (I hate mentioning competitors names on peoples blogs but I would like to hear an honest answer as someone who finds this product interesting)
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