Customer Segments - SWOT Analysis
In this exercise, we considered again the six customer segments we used earlier:
we also addressed "Developers" as a separate, cross-cutting audience
... for each, we considered Plone's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats for each segment.
EDUCATION
*Strengths*
User & group permissioning (+1)
Open source (+1)
Free
Pluggable auth/CAS
Python as "glue"
Multi-site hosting
Multi-platform support
Easy-to-use
Enfold Desktop
Distributed security
TCO (low cost)
Low barrier to entry
Customizability
Metadata support
Integration potential
Scalability
Accessibility (+1)
The WebLION project
Internationalization
Distributed CRUD
Good out-of-the-box story
WYSIWYG editing
Document management
*Weaknesses*
Learning curve, risk of long-term maintenance issues due to staff turnover
Collaboration tools
Deployment
Migration
Hosting
No offline mode
Failed "EduPlone" effort
*Opportunities*
Emerging "Open Courseware" market
Rostering/groups/teams
Calendaring
Micro-publishing (blogs, wikis)
Poorly-done proprietary, domain-specific platforms (also a threat!)
Infiltration via individual faculty
Research/bibliography features (+1)
Education bundle
Improved integration with ID management solutions
Better collaboration tools (+1)
Improved document management
Integration with existing diverse systems (e.g. LMS)
Rating/marking of content
Filtering content, quotas
Investigate EU Funding opportunities
Need a mass deployment solution
Focus on students
WSRP integration
*Threats*
"Old school" IT attitudes
Entrenched proprietary domain-specific platforms (e.g. Blackboard)
Top-level mandates
Moodle, Sakai, Clarolia (LMS)
Drupal
Joomla
Sharepoint
GOVERNMENT
*Strengths*
Security (+2)
Accessibility (+4)
References
Complex workflows (+1)
Internationalization & localization (+5)
Ease of use (+2)
The open source process
Users&
Add-on products (+1)
No vendor lock-in
Licensing
Content-level collaboration
Flexibility
PloneGov initiative
*Weaknesses*
"Tender-hostile" (i.e. hard to bid Plone in government tender/RFP processes)
Content delivery systems
Document management
No "Plone lobby"
ZODB isn't SQL
No single responsible vendor
Activity-based workflow
No regulatory compliance
Few vendors on GSA schedule
Perception of an "exotic" technology stack (+2)
Relatively limited support & consulting options (+2)
Content export
Print-ready formatting
Static deployments
Perception of vendor lock-in
Not sold by big corporations
Management of paper forms, scanning & imaging
*Opportunities*
Desktop integration
Application-level integration
Activity-based workflow
Transforms
Search/catalog improvements
Records management applications
Better collaboration tools
Reuse functionality - between state gov't, cities, etc. implementations
Governments are getting more positive about open source
Political campaign management
Accessibility regulations & laws
Local governments & developing countries
MS Office integration
Training
Open Office
Hosting
Activism/outreach
*Threats*
Hard for small consultancies to penetrate government processes
Budget for commercial options
Movement towards Java & .NET
Wholesale deals with Microsoft & Oracle (+1)
Bad news stories about open source (& Python?)
Entrenched providers
Admin overhead of gov't projects
NONPROFIT
*Strengths*
Cheap/easy to evaluate
Free
Open source license
Windows installer
Easy to get running quickly and skin
Internationalization (+1)
Accessibility
Values & culture alignment between nonprofits & open source (+1)
Search engine friendliness (+1)
OpenID support
Good reputation
Web syndication
Ease-of-use, little training required (+3)
Kupu WYSIWYG editor
Easy to get involved in the Plone community
Allows content to maintained without a webmaster on staff
Great case studies
Paul Everitt :-)
*Weaknesses*
Lowest-end hosting isn't as cheap/easy as LAMP (+2)
Good consultants are booked solid and relatively expensive (+2)
Hard to find good case studies
Hard (and thus expensive) for non-developers to customize (+1)
Missing online donation/ecommerce features (+2)
No email blasting tools (+2)
Out-of-the-box speed (+2)
No good blogging story out-of-the-box
Difficult to estimate the cost of customization/extension
Kupu WYSIWYG editor
Hard to maintain/migration issues (+1)
*Opportunities*
Through-the-web scripting
Through-the-web content type creation
NGO distribution for Plone (+1)
Shared instances
Africa & South America as growth markets
Investigate EU funding opportunities
Constituent relationship management integration (e.g. Salesforce), and stronger marketing of this work (+5)
More case studies
Project collaboration workspaces (+2)
Static deployment of content
Blogging
Offline replication of content for low-connectivity environments
Proven on-demand scaling (via, e.g., Amazon EC2)
Lots of potential social networking tool integrations (e.g. pyfacebook)
Developer/integrator documentation
KARL (OSI's Plone-powered community intranet project)
*Threats*
Turn-key targeted solutions
Large commercial vendors
Perception of Plone as hard, fat and complicated
Google Groups, Basecamp for project collaboration
Heavily discounted Sharepoint
Drupal + CiviCRM
LAMP stack deployment story
Wordpress for blogging and brochure sites
Low-cost PHP developers
Openplans
LARGE ENTERPRISE
*Strengths*
Web publishing
Flexibility/extensibility (+2)
Usability
Accessibility (+1)
Internationalization/multilingual (+1)
Workflow allows us to model business processes (+1)
Security
LDAP/Active Directory Integration (SSO)
Aftermarket ability to expand features
Low cost
Strong integration story
Feature rich
Good reviews (+1)
Enfold Desktop (Windows desktop integration)
Schemaless, hierarchical content
PAS
Rapid deployment cycle
*Weaknesses*
Lack of large consulting firms (+2)
Hard to find consultants (they are often busy!)
Scalability (# of users, speed) (+2)
External file storage
Data import/export
Static content publishing
Perception that low cost = low value
ZODB
Python & Zope are perceived as "too niche" (+1)
Low visibility
Perception that Plone is "not enterprise worthy"
Perception of open source
Versioning
Documentation (esp. for sys admins)
Backup/restore procedures unclear
Integration with widely used monitoring/backup systems
Upgrades/migrations
Lack of marketing materials
Lack of published success stories
*Opportunities*
Collaboration
RelStorage (uses Oracle DB as ZODB storage)
Growing Python awareness
Auditing (who did what, when)
Through-the-web content type development
RDBMS integration (via SQLAlchemy?) (+1)
Enfold/Windows integration
IBM Guideshare (network)
OEMs
Marketing materials (+1)
CSV support
Enterprise distribution
More content deployment options (e.g. Entransit, CMFDeployment/static)
Document management
More layers, better packaging, more decoupled stack
Certifications (and publicizing them!)
Networks of companies/consultants
Documentation of our various APIs
*Threats*
Anti-open source attitudes
Big consulting firms
Microsoft ecosystem
Java, .NET
Alfresco (+1)
Sharepoint (+2)
Rhythmx (+1)
Red Dot (+1)
Entrenched systems adding "CMS" features
Products backed by large corporations
"Thinking we should do enterprise"
SMALL/MEDIUM BUSINESS
*Strengths*
Plone community (+1)
Out-of-the-box experience (+1)
Packaged installers
Low TCO (+1)
Easy extensibility, grows with the business (+1)
Happy customers evangelize Plone for us
Users can control content, no webmaster needed
Vast number of add-on products (+1)
Ease of use (+1)
Easy to setup
End-user manual (from Gocept)
WYSIWYG editor
Search
Security
Workflows (+1)
User & group permissions
IRC provides free, live support
*Weaknesses*
ecommerce
Performance
Difficulty of themeing
Vast number of add-on products (confusing!)
Suspicion of ZODB (unfamiliar)
Integration with relational content
Low-end hosting is not as low-end as LAMP
Fewer hosting providers support
Calendaring
Documentation (+1)
Scarcity of skilled consultants
Hard to theme (+1)
Upgrading third-party add-on products
End-user manual lacks translations
*Opportunities*
Through-the-web development (w/ roundtrip via GSXML)
XML import/export of content
Hosted Plone service + evangelism thereof
A new, easier themeing story, with documentation (+1)
Small business bundle, including Active Directory auth
Better app development story via WSGI
Calendaring
Integration success stories
More metric & stats
Predictable deployments
More consistent configuration
Free Enfold Desktop
E-Commerce (+1)
Supporrt
STartups
Co-existence with Django
Event Registration
Email newsletter integration
Product certification
Through-the-web download & install of new products
Static deployment
*Threats*
Hard to hire Plone people / developer scarcity
Joomla w/ VirtuMart (ecommerce)
.NET, Java based CMS
"Hosted" solutions
Google Apps/Suites (+1)
Sharepoint
Alfresco
Ruby On Rails (custom app dev) (+1)
Amazon e-Commerce services
Wikis
Blogs
MEDIA/BROADCASTING
*Strengths*
Solid core features (+1)
Clean, elegant UI
Community passion, buy in (+1)
Workflow (+1)
Security
Custom metadata
GSA integration
Relationships
RSS
Zope has penetration already in this market
Ease of use
Collaboration
Buildout for deployment
Photo albums
Searching (incl. PDF, Word indexing)
Friendly URLs
Search engine friendliness
Media reputation
*Weaknesses*
Large file handling (+3) + delivery
Templating changes frequently
Scaling (# of documents)
Highly transactional sites
Difficult to theme
SOcial networking features
Blob storage
Staging/versioning
Syndication
RSS aggregation
Streaming (+1)
Commenting & moderation
Content delivery performance
Lack of media-specific transforms
Content export
Categorization
Kupu support for media objects
*Opportunities*
Alternate content representation
Tramline/ static deployment of media files
iTunes
Blob as large file solution (+4)
Plone + media standards
Content reuse (+1)
Ratings (+1)
Metadata handling
Plone4Artists (+1)
Zope 3
Mashups
Kupu
Jackrabbit
Tagging
Commenting
Separate content management from delivery
Integrate with content delivery networks
*Threats*
Django (newspapers) (+1)
Services (facebook, etc.)
Brightcove/Blip.tv/YouTube (?)
Drupal media plugins, community add-ons (+1)
Wordpress + plugins
Industry-specific solutions
Fluxiom
Akamai (?)
DEVELOPERS
*Strengths*
Python (+5)
Security model (+1)
Python's readability, ease of learning
Not PHP
Community (+1)
Prestigious high-tech clients/sites
Open-source
Strong potential to earn money as a developer
#plone
Sprints (+1)
Strong community processes
Database transactions
ZODB (+1)
KSS
GPL license
Through-the-web development
Installers
Component architecture
Test-driven development practices
Buildout
Plone Foundation
PLIP process
Release management
Customization
*Weaknesses*
Complexity
Moving targets
Steep learning curve (+4)
Not PHP
MVC confusion (with Archetypes)
Different ways of doing things
Server restarts required during development
ZODB
Quality of add-on product varies (+1)
Tests run slowly
Documentation is poorly structured
GPL
Not fun to work on
No proper layering of concerns
Stack complexity (+1)
MacYET on IRC
SQL integration
Expectation management
Rapid pace of change
Hard migrations (+1)
Themeing too hard
ZCML
"Code is documentation" attitude
Zope 2 legacy
Archetypes
Lack of API/documentation
*Opportunities*
Reducing complexity
New developer mentoring program
WSGI/Repoze
Distinguish Plone from rapid frameworks
How to make money with Plone
Good defaults with configuration options
Better documentation (+1)
AGX/UML
Web services
Better build system + deployment systems
Push pieces of Plone out of Plone
TTW content types, theming to ease learning curve (+1)
Screencasts
Google Summer of Code/GHOP
TTW installation of products
Promote Python to Java programmers
Local Ploneability events!
Sprints
SQLAlchemy
*Threats*
Integrated suites (Microsoft, Java)
Rapid frameworks (Ruby on Rails, Django)
Software as a service (e.g. Google)
Cleverness in Plone's codebase
Internal ("Plone doesn't do X")
Continuing steep learning curve
Perception that free software is cost-free
Other python frameworks
Python 3000
Schools teaching Java & .NET only
Drupal
Pissed off developers bad-mouthing us, damage control
Sharepoint/Alfreco
Lack of human resources