IBM: Hitting Numbers by Chasing Medium Sized Fish, Not Whales

July 11, 2014

I scanned my false drop stuffed Yahoo Alert a moment ago (5 04 am Eastern time). I clicked a link with the fetching headline “Enterprise Search Adoption among Midsize Firms.” The core of the story is a reference to an allegedly accurate survey from another publisher. I learned “nearly 40 percent of IT departments reported that they have already invested or plan to invest in enterprise search solutions.” Yikes. That means that 60 percent of midsize firms cannot locate information. Looks like a great opportunity to license an enterprise search system. I wondered who was at the root of this article and had such confidence in a market that probably is expensive to convince to pump big bucks into a Google Search Appliance (starts at $50,000 or so), an Autonomy IDOL hosted service or Amazon Search service with no cap on costs, or sign up for a bargain basement hosted search system until the ministrations of an expensive consultant are required. Most organizations use one of the default, utility search systems already included with other applications; for example, Microsoft’s search feature or a freeeware system like Effective File Search or an open source system like Sphinx Search or Searchdaimon.

After clicking of a few links I was directed to the eminence gris behind this article. Guess who? IBM. The link pointed me to http://www.ibm.com/midmarket/us/en/?lnk=mhso&CE=ISM0124. Yep, IBM wants to recover the billion tossed into Watson (really helpful for a midsize business wanting to win a game show or develop a recipe) or the $3 billion extending Moore’s Law.

I know from industry chatter at the trade shows I attend that there is concern about the future of IBM. This does not come just from those customers who pine for the good old days when IBM engineers delivered expensive but top notch service. Nope. The laments come from IBM professionals. I think I heard words like “lost its way,” “chaotic,” and “floundering.”

Several observations:

ITEM: Selling big buck enterprise search services to midsize firms is expensive, slow, and difficult. If these firms were able to float the boats of other search vendors, the vendors would be in high cotton. The middle market already has search and that’s why 60 percent of the outfits in the allegedly accurate survey are not buying standalone systems. Almost every piece of software includes a finding function. These are either good enough or are not used because users have found workarounds.

ITEM: IBM fees are going to cause even “large” midsize businesses (oxymoronic, right?) to pause. Imagine the cost impact of paying IBM sales people to pitch a product/service that a potential customers does not want, cannot afford, or already has available. Losses mount. Seems obvious to me.

ITEM: The clumsy content marketing ploy of creating a content free article and then pitching IBM as a generic solution is silly. Navigate to the IBM Small and Medium Business Solution page. IBM is offering “customized solutions.”

I don’t think the solution is on point. I don’t think the marketing approach is particularly useful. I don’t think the midsize business will beat a path to the door of a company known to sell expensive services while funding billion dollar pipe dreams.

You can, however, sign up for Forward View, an eMagazine. Yep, helpful.

Call me skeptical.

Stephen E Arnold, July 11, 2014

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