The "Market Leader"
I recently attended the M6 Mobility XChange Conference in
sunny San Diego where a panel of three CEO's from the participating MBaaS solutions were brought before the mobility and IT expert attendees of enterprise companies. There was debate (as you would expect from competitors in an emerging market segment) regarding the best technology and methodology to tackle this growing challenge in the market. However, there were two much younger companies (Company 1 and Company 2) that were trying to convince the audience that they were equal to Company 3 in capabilities and number of customers. As I sat in amazement, I pulled up my iPad and Googled the word Market Leader for the definition out of curiosity. According to the online business dictionary, the definition of a Market Leader is: A brand, product, or firm that has the largest percentage of total sales revenue (the market share) of a market. A market leader often dominates its competitors in customer loyalty, distribution coverage, image, perceived value, price, profit, and promotional spending. Company 3 in comparison to not only these two specific vendors but also all of the others meets this criteria hands down. This brought to memory a meeting I once had with a VP of IT at a very large aerospace company who had recently purchase my company's platform... she asked me a question that stuck with me all of these years... "Why does your competitor state that they are the "leader" in your technology solution space when clearly your company has the superior solution"? Before I share the rest of the story I want to give some context to a company who is truly a leader in their space. Three words come to mind when I think about Company 3 and what makes them the Leader their space. 1) Empower: a technology has to empower users of the product to execute functions and processes at a rate that they wouldn't normally be able to accomplish (it's the bigger, better, faster concept) and provide an end result that is far better than they would have by not using a solution. But there's more to it than that. Empowering users to do what they do best (in this case), with what tools and SDK's they use normally to accomplish those tasks and empowering them to execute those functions better, faster, and more cost effectively is empowerment on steroids. 2) Proven: a technology has to provide confidence that, not only will it do what is said it will do, but also has done it consistently in the past with enterprise companies at the level they require. This is a huge differentiator for Company 3 (being the originator of and the company that coined the in their market space) because they have a proven technology platform (80,000 + developers have signed up for sessions on our platform and they've delivered over 20,000 mobile applications utilizing their platform) with independent developers, third party agencies, and most importantly enterprise customers. Company 3 has PROVEN scalability, security, and up time that no other vendor has had the chance to prove. Company 3 has Fortune 50 customers who have standardized on their platform to deliver their hundreds of enterprise mobile applications.
That is proven technology that none of the other vendors can claim. 3) Up-to-Date: the whole concept of Company 3’s platform is that it provides all of the latest, up-to-date versions of all of the following components so organizations don't have to "re-invent the wheel" for every app:
* DATA: enterprise, cloud and SaaS data, API, File Store, REST, SOAP, SQL, & MQ * IDENTITY: third party OAUTH, Salesforce.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, LDAP & Active Directory * ENGAGEMENT: Push notifications, location, iBeacons, Email, SMS... and * BUSINESS LOGIC: App Logic, Triggers, Data Mashup, and Validation A truly enterprise capable solution should consistently provide the latest and greatest of all of the above as soon as it's available so the consumer doesn't have to. As a service provider, Company 3’s
SLA is on them whether in the cloud or as a dedicated instance. They're
Responsible so the customer can concentrate on a truly capable and compelling
app that will reap the results you developed it for... to impact your business. So back to my story about the meeting with the VP of IT at the very large aerospace company... I responded to her by saying, "I can't control what my competitors claim, I can only honestly prove my solution's value and capabilities and how we meet your requirements". To that she replied "Well you certainly did that because when we notified your competitor that we chose your solution over theirs, they offered theirs to us at no cost. However, we did think about it long and hard but we felt that we would see more value in paying for your superior solution than we would see by using an inferior technology from a company that we couldn't trust would be able to support it." If a vendor claims they have all of the above and that they're the "leader" in a technology space they need to prove it. Company 3 was obviously the proven leader. So leading a market isn't easy, it’s taken Company 3 over 3 1/2 years and a lot of time, cost, and expertise to create a truly capable enterprise solution that meets the requirements of enterprises using it every day. They didn't build this platform to exploit a need in the market, They created this market to provide the leading solution for customers with an inherent need over the long term.
