Saturday, January 06, 2007
Liberty Alliance, Enterprises and Membership
Conor Cahill posted some interesting thoughts on Liberty Alliance and Membership that I felt needed some analysis...
Let's take some key phrases:
Your list is actually pretty good. If I consider your first statement it does speak to the lack of skillset in many large enterprises and their ability to play within a larger community. Most technical folks make their careers out of being suck ups to non-technical management. Participating in a community simply requires a skillset that does exist but isn't either traditionally recognized in their staff and/or not respected by the upper ranks.
In terms of your second bullet, I would say that $$$ are limited. Rather I would say that the masses of large enterprises still don't understand the value of paying money to participate and what return it brings. In my particular situation, I am currently participating in OpenID, so obviously time isn't the issue. The issue is that both ways can provide the same return yet one is a lot cheaper than another.
As far as your last bullet, there is absolutely nothing wrong with knowing that if others are participating, they don't need to. For example, if folks within my industry vertical trust me to do the right thing then so be it. Likewise, I know that if folks from say Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse or Morgan Stanley are participating, I really don't need to worry about as my peers over their are freakin brilliant.
| | View blog reactionsLet's take some key phrases:
- We run a conformance certification process to help ensure that different products will work together.
- All of that said, I think there are many reasons why a large number of companies (both vendor and enterprise alike) choose to not participate in a standards body:
- It's hard work. Writing a standard is not simple and working with people from many different companies with different interests makes it even harder.
- They have limited resources -- $$ and/or people.
- There may be a lack of interest -- "Let the vendors figure it out".
- They believe that it's easier to just let others do the work and then adopt it when it's all done. Perhaps they feel that if so-and-so is participating, that's enough for them.
Your list is actually pretty good. If I consider your first statement it does speak to the lack of skillset in many large enterprises and their ability to play within a larger community. Most technical folks make their careers out of being suck ups to non-technical management. Participating in a community simply requires a skillset that does exist but isn't either traditionally recognized in their staff and/or not respected by the upper ranks.
In terms of your second bullet, I would say that $$$ are limited. Rather I would say that the masses of large enterprises still don't understand the value of paying money to participate and what return it brings. In my particular situation, I am currently participating in OpenID, so obviously time isn't the issue. The issue is that both ways can provide the same return yet one is a lot cheaper than another.
As far as your last bullet, there is absolutely nothing wrong with knowing that if others are participating, they don't need to. For example, if folks within my industry vertical trust me to do the right thing then so be it. Likewise, I know that if folks from say Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse or Morgan Stanley are participating, I really don't need to worry about as my peers over their are freakin brilliant.
- Liberty also has vendor participation (and the enterprises want them there so that this stuff gets into real products that the enterprises can purchase). I think the mix is one of the strongest things that Liberty has in its favor.
