IT Management and Cloud Blog » gwmanup http://www.johnmwillis.com JOHNMWILLIS BLOG Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:46:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 GroundWork – Man Up http://www.johnmwillis.com/opensource/groundwork-man-up/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=groundwork-man-up http://www.johnmwillis.com/opensource/groundwork-man-up/#comments Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:23:17 +0000 John http://www.johnmwillis.com/sugarcrm/groundwork-man-up/ I heard this weekend that Groundwork is afraid of me. Wasup with that? Guys, I am a 48-year-old nobody who is still looking to score my first backyard built-in swimming pool. No series “D” funding here. Come on guys, if you don’t like what I am saying, let’s debate it. Here are some of my outstanding questions:

  1. Where is Ranga and why did he leave?
  2. Can Dave Lilly be an effective CEO or is this just a transition?
  3. Can you explain the mass exodus of senior personnel that have left in the last year?
  4. Is your execution model still two thirds services and one third product?
  5. I always hear about your customer growth, but I never hear about your revenue. Last I heard, you were stuck at the $5 million per year with two-thirds of that being services and not product revue.
  6. With $25m in VC funding are you running a sustainable model?
  7. Why would Tara Spalding, one of SugarCRM’s first employees, leave SugraCRM? I thought that they were thought to be one of the first potential OSS IPO success stories. Was this a fire sale?

Don’t be afraid; I won’t bite. Instead of just doing press releases and having analysts regurgitate your story, come here and do a podcast with me so that we can focus on transparency.

]]> http://www.johnmwillis.com/opensource/groundwork-man-up/feed/ 6 Groundwork the Mystery Continues http://www.johnmwillis.com/groundwork/groundwork-the-mystery-continues/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=groundwork-the-mystery-continues http://www.johnmwillis.com/groundwork/groundwork-the-mystery-continues/#comments Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:06:06 +0000 John http://www.johnmwillis.com/wp/groundworkopensource/groundwork-the-mystery-continues/ I noticed in one of Tarus’ latest blogs that he mentioned that Ranga Rangachari, the ex CEO of Groundwork, is no longer listed on the Groundwork management team. In fact, I looked at Groundwork’s management team page, and it looks like Dave Lilly (one of the founders) is back at the helm. I am not sure what this means for Groundwork, which has seen a lot of transition over the last year. It has lost a VP of Marketing, a VP of Sales, a lead architect, and now its CEO. IMHO, loosing Ranga might be the best thing that ever happened to Groundwork. When I talked to Ranga a year ago, I felt that his resume far exceeded his skills and that he was running a good thing into the ground because of his “Deer in the Headlights” fear of his VC’s. Dave Lilly, on the other hand, is a startup guys type of CEO and it might be a positive that he is back in charge.

The real question is did Ranga quit because, like Phil, Tony, and Tony, he saw the writing on the wall, or did Dave make a deal with the devil and let the VC’s feed Ranga to the slaughter?

]]> http://www.johnmwillis.com/groundwork/groundwork-the-mystery-continues/feed/ 0 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly http://www.johnmwillis.com/groundwork/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly http://www.johnmwillis.com/groundwork/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:45:46 +0000 John http://www.johnmwillis.com/wp/nagios/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ Sergio Leone couldn’t have scripted this one any better.


Nagios Enterprises and GroundWork Open Source Forge Strategic Partnership

]]> http://www.johnmwillis.com/groundwork/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/feed/ 3 My Views on OSS ESM (Part 2) http://www.johnmwillis.com/opensource/my-views-on-oss-esm-part-2/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-views-on-oss-esm-part-2 http://www.johnmwillis.com/opensource/my-views-on-oss-esm-part-2/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2007 09:41:00 +0000 John http://www.johnmwillis.com/wp/other/my-views-on-oss-esm-part-2/ Are Venture Capitalists the Root of all OSS Evil?

In my last blog article I talked about analyst groups and my thoughts thereof. Venture Capitals (VC’s) are a great follow-on in a vendor to analyst group (AG) food chain. As I described in the aforementioned blog article I noted that vendors tell analyst groups what they want to hear. Well, analyst groups basically tell VC’s what they want to hear. It is a vicious food chain where the analysts and VC’s eat their young (not really I just thought it sounded cool). VC’s are also customers of analyst groups as well as vendors. Although, I think this is another conflict of interest for analyst groups there is no concept of conflict of interest in the VC world. In fact most times you can’t tell a VC or an AG apart. Actually the only way is by their net worth. Again is anyone doing any serious research on what VC’s are brining to the OSS table good or bad. Do VC’s really just make an OSS vendor another feature driven software company?

In the ESM OSS space you can use Groundwork again as a template (sorry Dave, however I know you agree with me). Groundwork is a sales and feature driven organization and probably lost its organics the day the VC’s appointed the CEO. Then comes CFO, then the EVP of sales and last but not least an EVP of marketing. Think about it, in a truly organic OSS project why would you have marketing? The beauty of OSS is that the community grows the project not the EVP of marketing. In most of the software companies I have worked for marketing requirements drive development projects and marketing requirements come from customer’s needs. Which customers? The ones the sales guys are screaming about the most.

The thing is that the VC’s haven’t figured out how this OSS thing works yet and when they get 20 million plus into a company they run the show regardless. What do VC’s do best? Go with what has worked for them in the past. You see a VC can fail 17 out of 20 times but those three hits make up for another 20 and then some. Therefore they are never wrong… never … You can’t argue with a billionaire. I have tried trust me. Sorry to keep picking on Groundwork but they have their chin out the farthest. Everyone in that company knows they should do a pure services play but the CEO is in denial. In fact he told me personally that there is no way the VC’s will let them talk services. IMO, VC’s were looking for traditional exit strategies with OSS ESM plays and were hoping to time the OSS bubble for Big 4 buyouts. Time is running out. Don’t forget a lot of the Big Four companies are a vast consolidation of VC funded startups (Tivoli, Marimba, MicroMuse, Novadign, the list could go on for days).

I am sure someone can site tons of examples of VC and OSS working and of course ventures like JBOSS had huge payoffs. The one thing I know is that the days of 10x to 15x are numbered and until the VC’s take their heads out of the sand and realize that the software industry is changing and it is all about knowledge IP and services (see my Reusable IP blog ) VC’s will continue to convolute OSS vendors.

Other articles in this series…

My Views on OSS ESM (Part 1)

My Views on OSS ESM (Part 3)

My Views on OSS ESM (Part 4)

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