[Evangelism] Total revenue metrics for Plone

[Dylan Jay]

Just responded to this blog
http://www.brandinteractivism.com/2009/08/gartners-wcms-magic-quadrant-is-unfair-to-open-source.html

I've been thinking that community open source could perhaps do more to
make itself comparable. For instance, Plone as a community is a very
distributed and loose organisation but it is still an organisation. As
a total organisation, including commercial integrators, it does make
revenue. Consultancy, support, hosting etc. If Plone were a single
company that would all be tracked and reported on so that those who
like such things to analyse (for better or for worse) could do so.

But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?

For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
amalgamated figure?

How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?

Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?

Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?


---
Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager
www.pretaweb.com
tel:[phone]
mob:[phone]
skype:dylan_jay

[Karl Horak]

Dylan,

I've been looking for the silver bullet that will slay the werewolf of web
statistics for several years, both for Plone and in my day-job. Alas, I
don't have a simple mechanism for pulling the answers you want (and the
community needs) out of the aether. I've gone on at some length over at
http://plonemetrics.blogspot.com/2009/08/meaningful-stats.html PloneMetrics
this morning.

Perhaps the best thing to do is have a Marketing Monday. Divvy up Plone.net
and send individual contact e-mails out with a questionnaire. When/if the
results roll in, manually accumulate them. Obviously, when it comes to
financial matters of Plone companies, a great deal of confidentiality will
be required.

Maybe a marketing sprint would be worthwhile. Anyone care to visit ABQ this
season?

Karl

...But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?
For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
amalgamated figure?
How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?
Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?
Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?
Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager

[Dylan Jay]

Post by Karl Horak
Dylan,
I've been looking for the silver bullet that will slay the werewolf of web
statistics for several years, both for Plone and in my day-job.
Alas, I
don't have a simple mechanism for pulling the answers you want (and the
community needs) out of the aether. I've gone on at some length over at
http://plonemetrics.blogspot.com/2009/08/meaningful-stats.html
PloneMetrics
this morning.
Perhaps the best thing to do is have a Marketing Monday. Divvy up Plone.net
and send individual contact e-mails out with a questionnaire. When/
if the
results roll in, manually accumulate them. Obviously, when it comes to
financial matters of Plone companies, a great deal of
confidentiality will
be required.

Thanks. I read your blog post with interest.

Gathering up total plone revenue would be interesting but also a lot
of effort. It also doesn't count all the work done by resource
internal to a company which I suspect is substantial.

Perhaps effort is better put into call back home type functionality in
plone (which has been discussed before) to gather better install base
stats. It would be very interesting to gather user counts on as many
plone sites as possible, and times them by the average sharepoint per
user license fee and give plone a sharepoint equivalent revenue
figure. Someone is probably going to tell me that such suspect
statistics will do the reputation of Plone more harm than good but it
doesn't sound worse than the top 3% of open source projects figure we
use a lot which is pretty meaningless.
I'm just trying to come at this from the point of view of how business
decision makers judge the worth of Plone if they aren;t in front of a
seller such as us. Plone is a 300M USD or 600M USD etc business
equivalent is simple enough to understand.

Post by Karl Horak
Maybe a marketing sprint would be worthwhile. Anyone care to visit ABQ this
season?

I'm pretty sure there will be one at the Plone conference but I have
yet to hear any annoucement.

Post by Karl Horak
Karl

...But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?
For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
amalgamated figure?
How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?
Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?
Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?
Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager

--
View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Total-revenue-metrics-for-Plone-tp3496960p3507000.html
Sent from the Evangelism mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
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[Dylan Jay]

Post by Karl Horak
Dylan,
I've been looking for the silver bullet that will slay the werewolf of web
statistics for several years, both for Plone and in my day-job.
Alas, I
don't have a simple mechanism for pulling the answers you want (and the
community needs) out of the aether. I've gone on at some length over at
http://plonemetrics.blogspot.com/2009/08/meaningful-stats.html
PloneMetrics
this morning.
Perhaps the best thing to do is have a Marketing Monday. Divvy up Plone.net
and send individual contact e-mails out with a questionnaire. When/
if the
results roll in, manually accumulate them. Obviously, when it comes to
financial matters of Plone companies, a great deal of
confidentiality will
be required.

Thanks. I read your blog post with interest.

Gathering up total plone revenue would be interesting but also a lot
of effort. It also doesn't count all the work done by resource
internal to a company which I suspect is substantial.

Perhaps effort is better put into call back home type functionality in
plone (which has been discussed before) to gather better install base
stats. It would be very interesting to gather user counts on as many
plone sites as possible, and times them by the average sharepoint per
user license fee and give plone a sharepoint equivalent revenue
figure. Someone is probably going to tell me that such suspect
statistics will do the reputation of Plone more harm than good but it
doesn't sound worse than the top 3% of open source projects figure we
use a lot which is pretty meaningless.
I'm just trying to come at this from the point of view of how business
decision makers judge the worth of Plone if they aren;t in front of a
seller such as us. Plone is a 300M USD or 600M USD etc business
equivalent is simple enough to understand.

Post by Karl Horak
Maybe a marketing sprint would be worthwhile. Anyone care to visit ABQ this
season?

I'm pretty sure there will be one at the Plone conference but I have
yet to hear any annoucement.

Post by Karl Horak
Karl

...But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?
For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
amalgamated figure?
How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?
Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?
Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?
Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager

--
View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Total-revenue-metrics-for-Plone-tp3496960p3507000.html
Sent from the Evangelism mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism

[Wouter Vanden Hove]

Post by Dylan Jay
For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
amalgamated figure?

Simplistically said revenue equals the following equation:
revenue = cost per license x number of licenses sold + \
cost per development/customisation hour x number of hours paid by client


For an open source software: cost per license = 0

How then can we make up for this "lost revenue"
and achieve the same results for clients?

- by being more expensive developers and/or
- by needing more hours for development/customisation (to reach the same)

But do we actually need to make up this "lost revenue"?

IMHO, we should abandon this kind of reasoning.
The logic Gartner uses is flawed and turns one of the greats aspect of open
source software into a negative one. And proprietaty companies love that.

If we agree the "revenue" for the software-company is "cost" for the clients
then "lost revenue" by using open source, means "less cost". Clients usually
love that. Open Source marketing initiatives should focus on that.

Post by Dylan Jay
How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?

I think number of involved FTE's

[Dylan Jay]

Just responded to this blog
http://www.brandinteractivism.com/2009/08/gartners-wcms-magic-quadrant-is-unfair-to-open-source.html

I've been thinking that community open source could perhaps do more to
make itself comparable. For instance, Plone as a community is a very
distributed and loose organisation but it is still an organisation. As
a total organisation, including commercial integrators, it does make
revenue. Consultancy, support, hosting etc. If Plone were a single
company that would all be tracked and reported on so that those who
like such things to analyse (for better or for worse) could do so.

But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?

For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
amalgamated figure?

How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?

Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?

Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?


---
Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager
www.pretaweb.com
tel:[phone]
mob:[phone]
skype:dylan_jay

[Karl Horak]

Dylan,

I've been looking for the silver bullet that will slay the werewolf of web
statistics for several years, both for Plone and in my day-job. Alas, I
don't have a simple mechanism for pulling the answers you want (and the
community needs) out of the aether. I've gone on at some length over at
http://plonemetrics.blogspot.com/2009/08/meaningful-stats.html PloneMetrics
this morning.

Perhaps the best thing to do is have a Marketing Monday. Divvy up Plone.net
and send individual contact e-mails out with a questionnaire. When/if the
results roll in, manually accumulate them. Obviously, when it comes to
financial matters of Plone companies, a great deal of confidentiality will
be required.

Maybe a marketing sprint would be worthwhile. Anyone care to visit ABQ this
season?

Karl

...But is it possible, even without Plone being one company?
For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
amalgamated figure?
How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?
Instead is it possible to estimate from stats we currently have?
Are there any stats about Plone's success that are really meaningful?
Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager

[Wouter Vanden Hove]

Post by Dylan Jay
For instance could an independent auditor collect all "plone revenue"
figures from all registered integrators for the purposes of created an
amalgamated figure?

Simplistically said revenue equals the following equation:
revenue = cost per license x number of licenses sold + \
cost per development/customisation hour x number of hours paid by client


For an open source software: cost per license = 0

How then can we make up for this "lost revenue"
and achieve the same results for clients?

- by being more expensive developers and/or
- by needing more hours for development/customisation (to reach the same)

But do we actually need to make up this "lost revenue"?

IMHO, we should abandon this kind of reasoning.
The logic Gartner uses is flawed and turns one of the greats aspect of open
source software into a negative one. And proprietaty companies love that.

If we agree the "revenue" for the software-company is "cost" for the clients
then "lost revenue" by using open source, means "less cost". Clients usually
love that. Open Source marketing initiatives should focus on that.

Post by Dylan Jay
How would work done with an organisation such as a university be valued?

I think number of involved FTE's