Umbraco Gold Partner: Open Source just died »

Yesterday one of the weirdest messages I have had in recent years came flying into my mailbox. Umbraco - the popular open source CMS software - was announcing the Gold Partner status. Being one of the most certified (Dutch) companies this was good news. Having experience with being a Microsoft Partner, that program really adds to your status and helps your developers work with the tools they promote.

But this time, my reaction was different. I could not believe my eyes…

Usually the status ‘Gold’ means really good, excellent and experienced development. You need extra competencies to reach that level and not every company can be ‘that good’. Here, it said the only difference was that a partner puts down a ridicoulous amount of money each year. I was flabbergasted.

There’s nothing wrong with supporting the Umbraco crew, in fact I am in favour of this. But the amount of money stated was like nothing I have ever seen before. Not even Microsoft would dare to ask this for their Gold Partner program. Next to that, it would not add anything to the reliability of the Partner, as the company could have less skills than a normal partner.

With the Microsoft Partner program you will get support FROM Microsoft to promote their products and use them as your basic tools. It is a win-win with both the vendor and the partner teaming up in developing all tools and making solutions from them. It isn’t used to pay Microsoft to develop their products.

We are building a huge package at the moment which would be a major add-on for the member section. As Umbraco is open-source our intention was to give it to the community, as we think this would really add to the product and would help out others who helped us with their packages. This is not your regular package, what we are building is huge. Yesterday’s message may have pursuaded me to commercialize on this product, so we can pay the Gold status from that. This is not what we want, we want to share, but if our competitors are stated as Gold we may be forced to. In my opinion, this move can kill the open-source thought which has made the Umbraco community strong.

Now, dear Umbraco, I know you guys are great at coding. You are great at functionality. You have built up a great community over the years… but your marketing still sucks. Please hire someone to do this properly, or if you did hire someone to invent this Gold Partner status, please fire him. There is only one profession that tells you how good you are when you put down money and you don’t deserve to be associated with that. Please fix this mistake.

Related subjects: umbraco partnership marketing software cms

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Second half 2010 a (Google) Wave for IT companies? »

2010 has been an interesting year so far. Recession can still be felt, although some companies - like my own - seem to thrive during this period. Traditional sectors seem to be caught by the distress much worse, which will cause them to cut back personnel and expenses. Next to that, they seem to increase spending on IT for more flexibility and efficiency.

The IT companies are on a wave right now, but is this good or not? Having to increase the amount of resources will cause investments to be made, while clients knocking at the door will take larger terms to pay the goods. This will bring a lot of IT companies to the ever growing risk of cashflow shortage. Unless you’ve seen the bad times before, chances are young entrepreneurs may not have the reserves and will be caught in a bad spot.

It will be interesting to see how smaller IT companies will cope with this. You can have a healthy company with loads of clients, but when you don’t have cashflow you’re at the mercy of the banks or the tax office. Cashflow shortage is one of the biggest threats of every enterprise. But what will happen to the companies expecting their software? They will suffer yet another loss when the IT company goes broke and will set back their efficiency some months or years. Still, most companies will opt for a slower payment.

Fact is, most clients see their IT companies as a supplies, which in most cases they are. But when their core business processes are automated by that company they will need those experience and skills to survive, whether they will like it or not. When your company is in the last category, better treat your IT company as a partner instead of a supplier. A body can’t move (easily) without its legs and cannot make new things without its arms. IT has become just in the last 10 years.

So what will it be for the second half of 2010? Will it be like riding on a wave, or will it be like Google Wave? I actually think IT companies can choose themselves. There is no shortage of work for the small to midsized ISV’s and when you’re not on the cowmarket (putting peope at the client’s office and expecting money for that, regardless of result) you should be good. It now comes down to the managerial skills of the often young(er) entrepreneurs.

It will be interesting to see who’s going to ride the wave… and who will be under it.

Related subjects: entrepreneur software it management

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Disqus Thing »

Related subjects: software Social media disqus

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Software Development 2.0 »

Being a software entrepreneur for over 10 years now, I have seen the development landscape change a lot. Ofcourse, the 10 years before that period have changed a lot as well, but we’re seeing a different change coming on. Where the previous era of software development focussed on getting to grips with the latest tools, frameworks and basically just keeping pace, the next decade will not only change development, but also developers.

My company Arlanet is in the Microsoft .NET business since the beginning of 2002. A major leap for software development - building on a framework instead of compiling on the lower layer - developers were finally getting some support in their building process. From then on, multiple versions of Visual Studio were developed and the 2010 version and .NET Framework 4.0 prove this way of developing software has stood the test of time. Until now.

With so much going on in the ‘social arena’, a good part of the developers now use an Apple. Heck, they’re using iPhones and iPods as well, but still love to develop on Microsoft. Mobile will become more and more integrated with business software that runs on Microsoft and more and more mobile is used on Apple. It will be interesting to see how these companies will integrate on each other, as Apple won’t take over the business software and Microsoft can’t get their mobile platform as dominant as their desktop variant.

Then there’s the developer’s community. Internet-minded techies go for the Mac, definitly. They try to keep their hands off the Microsoft crap (as they call it) and go for CSS, HTML5, jQuery or whatever is hot. They are hardcore developers as well, just not in the sense we know them - compiling code and reading the Daily WTF where poor pieces of code are being laughed about. However, these developers are both getting more and more depended upon each other.

The coming years will see expertises arise within the developers community that were subtasks before now. The internet - and developing for it - has become so damn complicated that professionals are needed at a much deeper level. Nerds will blend with former-creatives-turned-techies. No longer an application will belong to one developer, otherwise it won’t run on a certain version of Internet Explorer. The techie needs a developer to implement on his ideas. Software companies with new strategies and services will arise on the scene. Old ones get to become small IBM’s, converting on their own legacy.

And the entrepreneur? He will align his company, regardless of change, following innovation and his guts. My guts tell me to change now.

Related subjects: entrepreneur software it .net

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