The plot thickens. Michael and Michael agree on something. Probably more than one thing.
What makes these things work is business domain and technology domain experience. People that can bring the two together, mix it up successfully in an organizations culture, policy and procedure blender, seem to be few and far between.
Therefore, alliances with partners, in addition to some internal delivery capability, is key. It seems that many of the players have done at least a fair job at recruiting internally and external partners to fill the void.
I haven't looked carefully at the splits for services and product revenue across all the players. What makes sense for the biz will not play well on the street unless handled right. Increasing mix of services revenue seen as a bad thing generally for a product company.
Lotus is nicely insulated from that, both in terms of product revenue measurement and because IBM ain't ashamed to build a big services biz.
To me it seems that vendors who can play well in the commodity space, plus maintain and enhance a big delivery community (internal and external), have the best chance at on-going success. And they'll need / want packaged applications that solve real business problems. While folks of my 'ilk' (some at least) might cry foul, I just don't think that the world needs 10,000 different implementations of a change management application.
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edit, now that I re-read what I wrote, I think I need to write again.
I think the market is identifying things which can be packaged. For example, a change control or ISO application could be generalized and packaged up for a broader audience. Simpler to implement, repeatable, etc. But will it be DM vendors building business apps, or businss app vendors adding in DM functionality? I've seen some small attempts by some.
Frankly, given that most all of our clients have needed us to push the envelope to bring together not just the DM/WM but also their existing applications into one semi-cohesive system, I wonder.
DCTM was very smart to target high-value business processes where the ROI would be really compelling. How much low hanging fruit is there?
I think I need some sugar or something... fading fast.
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