Previously, Alec Saunders wrote in qdn.public.qnxrtp.advocacy:
Yes, QNX is not a name-brand. However, in awareness surveys amongst embedded
operating systems developers (our key audience), we rank 5th in awareness
globally, and in North America, and 3rd in awareness in Europe. We’d like
that awareness to be higher amongst developers, and also amongst business
decision makers in the organizations where they work. It’s my team’s job to
make that happen.
I guess it is time for me to speak up. I’ll be blunt, and I won’t hold
back one iota.
Awareness amoungst developers doesn’t mean a damned thing. You don’t have to
look very far to see proof, but I will spell it out for you anyway.
DEVELOPERS ARE NOT TYPICALLY THE BUSINESS DECISION MAKERS
As Alec points out, and as we all know, any developer that is worth his
salt takes one look at the architecture of QNX and almost immediately
recognises how good it is. You don’t have to do a damned thing to
“sell” a competent developer on the advantages of QNX, all you have to
do it get it in front of them and maybe give them some sample apps (with
source) to show them just how amazingly simple it is to take advantage
of the QNX arch. And the RTP “free for non-commercial” more or less
does that, although it is missing the “introduction” code & app samples
that point out in code just how good the arch is.
So the problem is the business decision makers. The problem is not that
they don’t understand what QNX is, or it’s advantages. The problem is
very simple…
THEY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF IT BEFORE
Business decisions are about risk, they are about time to market (TTM),
they are about time to quality (TTQ), and they are about time to cash
(TTC). As others have pointed out, OS arch isn’t even in there at this
level.
(for this next bit, bear with me, it DOES have relevance and is more
than just a story about my career and the company that I work for)
I’m a QNX consultant for hire, I do this part time, in the past it has
been full time, or even as an on-staff developer. My day job is with
Nortel Networks. I am certain that ALL of you know who Nortel is,
although I will bet that few of you know what we do, or what products we
make. The interesting point is that two or three years ago, most of you
had NEVER heard of Nortel.
…and that was bad. When I first started at Nortel, I was very soon
amazed at all the different products and technology they were
responsible for. The wallplates for the phone jacks the local telco
installed had NT (Northern Telecom) logos on the back of them, so did
all of my phones from the telco, and I discovered that so did many,
many, many other things. Things that I had used before, things I had
heard of. Hell, if you want to get a little technical… QSSL was
spawned by Nortel (Dan and Gord worked at Bell Northern Research,
Nortel’s R&D division at the time when they first came up with the
concept of the OS while working on similiar things at BNR). Look into
the source code trees for Linux IDE and other device drivers, you will
see the names of people from BNR, NT, and Nortel. IBDN/Bix structured
wiring, was from Nortel, several innovations now common in the
electronic circuit assembly process were pioneered at Nortel. They were
huge, they were everywhere…
AND… no one had even heard of them.
This should sound VERY familiar. It is a similiar position that QSSL is
currently facing, they are in quite a few places, they have a really
good product, they have really good support. …and they have NO
IDENTITY, and NO BRAND RECOGNITION.
Of course something happened at Nortel, we aquired (yes, I know the
trade press called it a merger, we were just being polite) Bay Networks,
and part of the deal was their CEO. The guy responsible for the
incredibly successful “intel inside” ad campaign. Nortel embarked on a
major awareness and brand identity campaign. You saw Nortel ads on tv,
you saw billboards, you opened the Globe & Mail or the Wall Street
Journal and you saw full page ads for Nortel Networks. I’m certain many
of you are familiar with them… the “What do you want the internet to
be?” and the “Come together” theme complete with the beatles tune.
Now, there was something interesting about those ads. Something a little
peculiar, or at least so people told me. They told me that the ads didn’t
tell them WHAT Nortel did, or even what we sold, they didn’t know what
message Nortel was trying to get accross.
The interesting thing is that they REMEMBERED the ads, they were
intrigued byw them, they wanted to know what Nortel was about, enough so
that they asked about it. They asked their friends, they visited the
website, they may have phoned us.
All of a sudden Nortel was a company that people recognised.
Our stock took off, split twice in a 2 year period climbed from $35 CDN
to over $120 CDN (if you calculate that out without the two splits, that
is the equivalent of going from $35 to $480).
The most important thing was that if you were in a meeting with business
decision makers and you mentioned Nortel, the first response wasn’t
“Who?”, but rather “Perhaps we should look into them”.
THAT IS WHAT QSSL NEEDS.
IT NEEDS IT DESPERATELY.
IT NEEDS IT YESTERDAY.
I really don’t think targetted advertising is going to do it. That will
reach the audience that you have already convinced, and it won’t do a
damned thing to the audience that those people (developers) need to
INFLUENCE, most developers haven’t got a clue how to influence the
business groups when they make their decisions. Most aren’t even in a
position (heirarchially) to exhert any influence that they might have.
It’s a sad, sad truth that you can have 10 people on staff in a company
like Nortel or Motorola and they can all tell “the business” that QNX is
great, and they they should try it, and that ONE SINGLE external
consultant can make the same reccomendation and presto, it gets
considered.
I (personally) think that QSSL needs to have some form of brand
awareness campaign. They should run ads on tv, targetted not at the
shows developers watch, but at the shows that business executives watch.
They should mention in those ads that QNX is behind the scenes in much
of their daily life, and that when people call 911, QNX is often
responsible for a timely dispatch of EMS personelle. They can use the
word “ROBUST”, then can say things like “THERE WHEN IT REALLY MATTERS”.
They shouldn’t say a damn thing about what it IS.
The need to have their name RECOGNISED, and that, in a nutshell is it.
The rest will take care of itself, provided that the call center people
that handle the inquiries and answer the emails, and design the website
have all the right answers and details.
I know who QSSL is, I know that QNX is the best damned OS that I well
ever see or work with. I, literally, don’t matter because I am NOT the
guy deciding to make a product, and I’m not the guy with the money to
fund it. I’m just the guy that could take QNX and make it a reality once
someone else decides that QNX is what they need. If I am lucky, I might
get to be one of the guys to advise the guy with the money, and he is the
one that matters. He is also the one that doesn’t know who or what QNX
is. That thats a problem, a really, really, really big problem.
Alec, if you do nothing else, solve this problem.
I’ll step off my soap box now, and I apologise for ranting, and
shouting.
Cheers,
Martin Zimmerman
QNX user/developer since 1985
–
Martin Zimmerman camz@passageway.com
Camz Software Enterprises www.passageway.com/camz/qnx/
QNX Programming & Consulting
