Here are two datum to look at:
Convio just hired Gary Allison whose resume shows a lot of experience with on demand products. In fact, he used to work for Simdesk whose entire business model is based on the need for enterprise on-demand computing. His resume claims:
Turned around and rebuilt challenged 50+ person Development Team, rebuilt Data Center Ops team, drove complete product rearchitecture, built international partner relationships, and delivered highly scalable on-demand computing platform across Linux, Windows, Web, and Mobile platforms.
Rebuilt Customer Service to work in a scalable partner mode and deliver service world-wide.
Responsbile for 24×7 on-demand services from Simdesk Data Center.
Convio also just raised $10 million in Series E financing. The press release states:
The money raised in this round will be used mostly for product development, but also to expand sales efforts, Austin said.
It’s not clear if the two issues are related and it may be that Gary Allison is being hired just because they need someone to work at their data center. However, his work experience in building an on-demand platform and Convio raising another $10 million does not suggest business as usual at Convio. In fact, it suggests that Convio is gearing up to go on-demand as well.
Again, I’m going to quote from an earlier post as to how Convio should launch its platform so that developers can work with it:
1. Publish the API — I can’t emphasize this enough
2. Have great documentation — encourage third parties to contribute
3. Use open source language examples — grow your developer base
4. Have great examples of mashups — Kintera [Convio too] to Joomla! anyone?
5. Promise to stay away from verticals developed on your platform — don’t eat your young (developers) and make sure they can make money
I would certainly love for all the readers to comment on this issue. Could it be that by the end of 2007, Kintera and Convio will release an open API for third party developers? If true, I predict an even tighter race between all the CRM vendors in 2008. And there may even be a chance that Kintera will get out of the dog house when it comes to this blogger’s opinion of Kintera’s offerings.
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So…when you say “API” and “mashups [to Joomla]…what are you looking for, specifically? The ability to pull member data from the db into content on a Joomla generated page? The ability to reuse Joomla-created content inside of a db-rendered page? I’m not calling you out, just looking for clarification/wish list.
Personally, if one application can manage both data and content, and provide a relatively simple API to pull/push member data, I’d go that route rather than work to mash two separate systems together. Maybe I’m missing something though?
Good points…
I would like to make forms in Joomla that could do a REST API call to write that data back into Convio. I would also like to do a REST API call FROM Joomla that reads data into the Joomla UI.
Frankly, Convio could serve as a backend to much of the front-end work being done by a much larger group of consultants and ISVs. Convio already has much of the business analysis done already. All the nerds want to do is make the front-end sing and pull data out of Convio that would allow for great new mashups (not necessarily to Joomla either).
Why not let people hire consultants to make great mapping tools out of Convio data that users have already entered into Convio. Why wait for Convio? How are Convio’s users served by forcing them to wait until Convio gets around to having its devs work on a custom business solution that may only work for one client alone. That seems silly, no?
Sometimes, mashing two systems together is highly desirable. Do me a favor. Take a look at Joomla’s list of CMS extensions over at http://extensions.joomla.org/. There are almost 1700 of them. Convio could NEVER equal that kind of development over time. They could never write that code for as cheaply as the implementations in Joomla. Yet, they keep forcing nonprofits to go the Convio-only route simply because of their outmoded and tired business model.
Convio can keep the data — it’s the access that people need. Convio needs to look beyond the scope of its current business plan and plan ahead to meet the demands of its user base even if vast portions of that user base don’t yet understand the need for open integration.
I agree that it would be great if one application did everything but this is rarely the case. What is more few organisations, especially larger ones, want to tie themselves to one vendor. Alternatively they already have several vendors for different software applications. It is all about choice. Vendors need to be aware that if they do not allow their clients that choice they will not get the business. Those vendors that do not enable their software to be easily integrated with others will eventually lose business. It is up to them to embrace this model so as to convince their clients that they are serious about allowing integration with other products.
When the vendor has such an open business model that they are so confident in their own products that they do not need to limit what is open to the client will the client be convinced of their further offerings.
David
Zeidman Development
http://www.zeidman.info
Here, here. I agree with David on this one. Open the platform, developers have work to do!