Reverse Engineering Force.com's Approach to the Cloud Computing Market

Cloud Computing Platform Services/ General PurposeREV 1
Lustratus REPAMASAS
Danny Goodall
Lead Marketing Analyst
dannyg@lustratusrepama.com
October 2009

Disclaimer
Whilst reasonable care and skill has been taken by Lustratus Research Limited (the company) in the preparation of this report no liability is accepted by the company (except in the case of death or personal injury caused by the company's negligence) by reason of any representation or any implied warranty condition or other term or any statutory or common law duty or otherwise howsoever arising for any direct or indirect general special or consequential damages or loss costs expenses or other claims (whether caused by the negligence of the company or otherwise) which come out of the provision of this report or its use.
All trademarks are acknowledged as the property of their respective owners.
REPAMA measures perception. The results are subjective and should be interpreted as such.

Introduction
This document contains the findings of the REPAMATM Segment Analysis Study into the Cloud Computing market and particularly the Platform Services / General Purpose market segment.
More vendors/providers will be added to this analysis over time. Right now only the positioning and messaging of Force.com is covered which makes some of the vendor-to-vendor comparisons in the REPAMA Marketing Element Diagrams below redundant.
Analysis for this study was performed during October 2009
A guide for interpreting these results can be found online at http://www.lustratusrepama.com/about/repama-guide/
Please provide any feedback you may have to dannyg@lustratusrepama.com

Platform Services / General Purpose Market
REPAMA Baseline Assessment

The Cloud Computing Market - Technical Capability Segmentation
This study focuses on the platform services / general purpose segment of the cloud computing market.
* These services have been arbitrarily grouped for layout purposes. There is no particular significance to this grouping.

Platform ServicesGeneral Purpose
Example Vendors/Providers
Working Definition
General purpose platform services provide metered, and/or on demand development tools, frameworks and/or execution environments that allow cloud-capable applications or application fragments to be built, deployed and managed.

REPAMA Baseline Assessment

Reverse Engineered Positioning - Force.com
FOR IT Managers and professional developers WHO need to build and run business applications and web sites without eating up valuable IT resources OUR Force.com ISA cloud platform THAT enables customers, partners and developers to quickly build powerful business applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud UNLIKE traditional software platforms OURPRODUCT doesn't need networks, servers, storage, a complicated software stack or the people, space and power to run them and as a result applications can be built five times faster at half the cost.

REPAMA Positioning Comparison

Depositioning – Force.com
Not included in this report – contact Lustratus for more information

Appendix I - Analysis
This section contains the detailed analysis of the vendors’ respective marketing and go-to-market strategies

Organisation and Market Approach
How are the vendors in the study positioning their organisations and how are they engaging with the market?

What Marketing Elements are Covered?

Company Profile
How does the company look to position itself?

Company Profile
How does the company look to position itself and how does it want to be perceived?

Offer Category
How does the vendor describe their offer category?

Primary Audience
Who is the primary target audience for the vendor's marketing communication efforts?

IT Technical - Represents the overtly technical disciplines within the IT organisation that have no management, strategic or commercial responsibilities
IT Business - Represents the higher management levels of the IT organisation that have strategic and/or financial responsibilities
Business - Represents the line of business functions outside of the IT organisation

Job Titles
Which job titles does the vendor focus their outbound marketing activities on?

Sales Engagement Level
At what level does the vendor look to engage its prospects – where does the sales process start? (this may be different from primary audience)

IT Technical - Represents the overtly technical disciplines within the IT organisation that have no management, strategic or commercial responsibilities
IT Business - Represents the higher management levels of the IT organisation that have strategic and/or financial responsibilities.
Business - Represents the line of business functions outside of the IT organisation

Market Stage
What market stage does the vendor’s marketing strategy suggest they are at?

Evangelism – no existing market. Vendor is looking to create the market
Early, proven – the market is at an early stage but there is proof of customers deriving benefit from the vendor’s technology
Mature – the market has existed for some time, customers, competition and alternatives exists
Mature with breakthrough – as mature but with a significant recent technical or commercial breakthrough

Vertical Market Segmentation
How does the vendor segment their market (in terms of vertical market or industry)?

Channel Approach
What channel relationships does the vendor’s outbound marketing suggest they engaged in?

Implied Sales Methodology
Does the vendor’s marketing approach suggest a specific methodology or approach is used towards sales?

Geographic Operations
Where does the vendor claim to have offices or representation. Each vendor’s commitment to a region is ranked based on their claimed number of offices. Regions are categorised as follows:

Africa
Americas
Asia Pacific
Europe
Middle-East

Not part of this study

Tone of Voice
What attitude does the vendor take when addressing the market?
Each of the categories describes the perception that the reader/viewer experiences when interacting with the vendors marketing materials.

Product
How are the vendors in the study marketing the features and benefits of their respective products?

Primary Feature/Benefit Focus
What features or benefits does the vendor ascribe to its product?

These are capabilities or elements of functionality that the vendor highlights in their outbound marketing activities
This list is not interpreted or rationalised but is instead the pure claims that the vendor makes for their offer

Interpreted Feature / Benefit
What features or benefits does the vendor ascribe to its product?

These are capabilities or elements of functionality that the vendor highlights in their outbound marketing activities
This list is rationalised so that multiple, similar features / benefits are grouped together to aid vendor to vendor comparison

Value Proposition Approach
How does the vendor approach selling business value?

No specific value proposition approach - This suggests that the vendor focuses on technical capability and does not sell based on business value
Cursory use to show affinity - This suggests that whilst the vendor uses business value in their marketing efforts it is not central to the sales process
Integral to the sales process - Value propositions and selling to the business are key to the vendor’s market engagement strategy

Primary Value Proposition
What value does the vendor ascribe to its product?

This is different from feature/benefit in that the vendor must translate a feature or capability into the value that the prospect would enjoy in business terms
This list is not interpreted or rationalised but is instead the pure claims that the vendor makes for their offer.

Interpreted Value Proposition
What value does the vendor ascribe to its product?

This is different from feature / benefit in that the vendor must translate a feature or capability into the business value that the prospect would enjoy
This list is rationalised so that multiple, similar value propositions are grouped together to aid vendor to vendor comparison

Use Cases
Which use cases does the vendor suggest its product is suitable for?

An omission here does not suggest a lack of suitability but rather the fact that the vendor does not specifically list the use case in their marketing

Positioning
How are the various vendors positioning their own products and depositioning the competition?

Positioning
This section shows the reverse-engineered positioning statements for each of the vendors in the study
The positioning statements shows the following perceived strategic marketing elements:
Target customer
Pain
Product name and category
Primary value/benefit
Primary competition or alternative
Unique selling proposition

Reverse Engineered Positioning - Force.com
FOR IT Managers and professional developers WHO need to build and run business applications and web sites without eating up valuable IT resources OUR Force.com ISA cloud platform THAT enables customers, partners and developers to quickly build powerful business applications to run every part of the enterprise in the cloud UNLIKE traditional software platforms OURPRODUCT doesn't need networks, servers, storage, a complicated software stack or the people, space and power to run them and as a result applications can be built five times faster at half the cost.

Positioning Matrix – Force.com

Differentiation Strategy
How does the vendor approach differentiation?

Organisational – The claimed difference lies with the company itself – age, experience, stability, etc.
Technical/Functional – Differentiation is about the product, features, functionality, capacity, etc.
Service – The human skills a company can offer
Holistic – No one thing differentiates the company, instead it is a combination of the above.

Perceived Threat
Which other vendor(s) does the vendor apparently perceive as a threat?

Implied/Explicit All – All vendors in the category
Other – Other vendors outside of the category

Depositioning Focus
How does the vendor categorise their main competition or alternative?

The vendor may explicitly or implicitly direct negative attention towards an alternative suggesting that the vendor fears this alternative and that overcoming it is key to sales success
This may be a competitor or simply an alternative way of doing things

Positioning Spectrum Analysis
For each of the elements of the positioning statement, how does each of the vendors compare to each other, and to the market mean?

Positioning Spectrum Analysis (PSA)
The PSA compares each vendor’s positioning elements with each others and with the market mean
This identifies similarities and differences in positioning strategy amongst the vendors in the study
The PSA elements studied include
Target customer (for...)
Their pain (who...)
The product (our...)
Product category (is a...)
Main benefit (that provides...)
Main competition / alternative (unlike...)
Unique selling proposition (USP)

PSA – For (Ideal Customer)
Who is the ideal target audience for the vendor’s product in their chosen market segment?

PSA – Who (Pain, Need, Desire)
The need, pain or desire of the target customer. How will this improve their lives?

PSA – Our...(Product Name)
The product name

PSA – Is A...(Product Category)
The name of the product category.

Where possible we have tried to interpret whether each other vendor has a legitimate claim to be present in each of the others’ categories

PSA – That Provides...(Reason to Buy)
The compelling reason for the ideal customer to buy

PSA – Unlike...(Competition/Alternative)
The name of the primary competitor or alternative

PSA – Our Product...(Primary Differentiation)
Primary differentiation.

Note that in some instances the REPAMA process cannot be specific about the precise, single differentiator that an organisation cites. In these cases, multiple differentiators are used

Appendix II – What is Repama?

What is REPAMATM?
REPAMA is Lustratus Research’s methodology for reverse engineering high-technology vendors’ marketing strategies, positioning and messaging
The REPAMA Segment Analysis Study compares multiple vendors’ market engagement strategies and projects a market mean that can be used for comparisons with the “average” vendor strategy
This information is interpreted qualitatively as well as represented graphically
The Lustratus REPAMA Guide can be found online at http://www.lustratusrepama.com/about/repama-guide/

REPAMA For Sales
In competitive situations, sales teams need to understand how their competitors are likely to behave. Gaining insight into the current messages and sales tactics that competitors are likely to use can provide a powerful advantage.
REPAMA helps sales teams understand the strategies and tactics that their competitors use in sales situations which allows better competitive strategies to be built. It helps to answer the following questions:

REPAMA For Marketing
Whether setting product strategy, empowering sales teams or generating leads, gaining an understanding into competitive behaviour is key for the marketing organisation. Comparing your own marketing strategy to those of your competitors and to the “average” strategy for your market segment allows for early identification of potential weakness as well as new opportunities.
REPAMA helps marketing teams to understand how their competitors are positioning their offerings and provides answers to the following questions:

REPAMA For General Mgmt
When comparing marketing and sales performance against competitors it is important to understand the differences in approach of the respective organisations. To do this it is key to map your own performance for a variety of indicators against those of key competitors.
REPAMA tracks the key marketing strategies of vendors in a specific market segment and plots these graphically against each other. By interpreting these indicators, the following questions can be answered for general management and equity investors:

Other REPAMA Deliverables
For more information on any of these items please contact us at info@lustatusrepama.com or via http://www.lustratusrepama.com

Revision History