A few months ago Salesforce announced VMforce as a way to bring Java developers to the cloud.

RT @tweetmeme Technical Writing — System vs. Software Requirements Specifications (SRS) | Technic.. http://bit.ly/d84J2X

By Peter O'Neill

Continuing my musings about the impact of cloud on our industry (see last week's blog), I'm in the middle of a cloud project where we are identifying and profiling potential channel partners for an ISV that is about to launch a systems management product for cloud environments. I must say, I'm surprised by the number of channel partners already talking about cloud.

It reminds me of a conversation with staff at Nimsoft, a company recently acquired by CA, about how they were promoting their cloud offerings. My personal view is that Nimsoft managed to complete their exit strategy so quickly and successfully because they focused all of their new product announcements and general positioning toward the cloud. Coincidentally, CA had decided to turn up the heat on its own cloud campaign and promptly bought three technology companies to strengthen the cloud offering and show their commitment -- Nimsoft, Cassat, and 3Tera.

While Cassat and 3Tera were cloud-specific solutions, Nimsoft was already successful as a provider of systems monitoring software to enterprises and managed service providers. My theory is that their cloud image was the result of a considered repositioning exercise that culminated in their placement on CA's wish list. Here's another example: Yesterday, Adobe announced its intention to acquire Day Software, the Swiss content management ISV. Day Software had a consistent ECM business with modest growth, but I notice that they turned up the cloud messaging over the last months -- I suspect this is what got them into Adobe's sights.

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Gosh, my iPhone can sorta do that. Now if only it made calls... Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Any acquisition in the content management industry usually makes a splash. Today, it was Day's day to stir up the media, analysts, bloggers, twitterati and industry watchers; provoking pontifications around the announced acquisition by Adobe .

Let’s be honest – the intricacies of the 2,300 page Restoring Financial Stability Act are challenging to digest. Even as a financial public relations professional, the task of tracking the ongoing developments of the financial reform while also developing strategic thought leadership for our spokespeople has been daunting – to say the least. However, the need to work closely with spokespeople to help translate their insights on complex financial issues into comprehensible, interesting and differentiating thought leadership is exactly what makes financial services public relations rewarding.

The Physical Security Interoperability Alliance has released its first go at a video analytics output specification this week, and is accepting comments on improving it through Aug.

Technology Marketing Corporation , a global, integrated media company, Aricent and Marvell have announced a partnership to deliver a Webinar, " Datacenter Ethernet 'Top of Rack' or 'Racking Your Brains' " on August 11, 2010 at 12:00 p.m. ET/9:00 a.m. PT.

Knowlagent customers are joining forces with the in-house product management team to influence the direction of future product features and releases.

One of this year’s “hottest” ad campaigns is for Procter & Gamble’s 72-year-old Old Spice brand.   During February’s Super Bowl, P&G launched a 30-second spot featuring the strapping actor Isaiah Mustafa, a former NFL wide receiver, as pitch man for P&G’s fledgling men’s shower gel which was running a distant third to Axe. The spot, [...]

RT @batimes Assessing the Impact of Poor Requirements on Companies | Business Analyst White Papers http://ow.ly/1qLSwG

As the CRM industry is witnessing significant movements to more cloud-based consumer and business solutions, companies that provide call center services are stepping up to the plate.

It’s not hard to find Agile projects and development teams, especially within the Silicon Valley ecosystem, but I am starting to see Agile methods (Scrum, specifically) used for a variety of non-development initiatives. I am an Agile convert, after having been an opponent for a long time, but I am not blind to the fact [...]

There is a very interesting article on wired.com about the psychographics of ipad owners and of the iPad’s biggest critics. I personally am both a fan and a critic of the iPad – I like it for personal use (my seven year old LOVES it and the idea of streaming Netflix movies on it while laying [...]

" July 28, 2010 - " KOM Networksa , creator and world leading provider of storage management solutions for secure archiving compliant data protection and retention today announced the certification of KOMpliance with Symantec Enterprise Vault, the industry leader in email and content archiving.

I’ve been paying close attention to the Shirley Sherrod coverage. Not so much from a political angle; I’m not knowledgeable enough about Sherrod or her circumstances to weigh in credibly on debates re: race and politics. What interests me more is the coverage itself and the warning bell it sounds for anyone (individuals, companies, communities) in the media’s line of sight. It underscores society’s obsession with sound-bites vs. storylines – and the media’s growing tendency to favor content over context.

So is there a way to manage these expectations and make sure there is a clear product direction? I have been using Product Council meetings to successfully do this. via productmanagementtips.com Customer councils (or customer advisory boards) are great for discovering problems from those who use your products. For more on advisory boards, see http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/topics/03/0305sj/ Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

This is the 5th  International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Education and Training (REET’10) Held in conjunction with the 18th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE’10)   The workshop will be held in Sydney, Australia on Tuesday 28th September 2010. This workshop will address issues related to RE education, both as part of a formal university [...]

They are trying to do a great job but have not been educated in the economics of software engineering and product management.

Today's a very exciting day for me. As you know, I'm a member of a team of Forrester analysts that writes research specifically for product marketers and product managers in the tech industry. A few weeks ago, we launched a community for product marketers and product managers. Now, we're bringing those two activities together, by including our PM community in every stage of a research project. Plus, we're using an Agile approach. And you're all invited.

(Role-based research. The voice of the customer, expressed loudly and regularly through social media. Agile as the vehicle for applying what customers say to the product we're developing, in the most rapid and substantive way possible. I guess we do read our own research.)

What's The Topic?
We've yet to meet a product marketer or product manager who isn't interested in thought leadership, given its attractiveness and elusiveness. Gaining recognition as a thought leader is only the first step. Having achieved that exalted status, How do vendors convert thought leadership into tangible business benefits?

For our first venture into this new research approach, thought leadership was an easy choice of topic: important, popular, practical, and manageable.

Where Does The Community Fit In?
The community has a bigger role to play in this project than just suggesting a topic. We need your suggestions and feedback throughout the entire research process, from inception to publication. For example, before doing the primary research, we'll draft a list of interview questions. Since thought leadership has no end of interesting aspects, we want to make sure that the questions we ask go straight to the issues that matter most to product marketers and product managers. Here are but a few examples:

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There have been many industry reports concerning a delayed roll out of Google's cloud Email service for the city of Los Angeles.

Collaborate with your team http://bit.ly/86ycsH

We’ve recently set up a Facebook fan page and a twitter account and we would like to ask a favor.  If you could please become a Facebook fan and Twitter follower and forward this message to other product management professionals who might be interested we would really appreciate it! As a reward you can have one of [...]

Mario Queiroz, Vice President of Product Management for Google, holds up the Nexus One smartphone running on the Google Android platform, the first mobile phone the internet company will sell directly to consumers, during a news conference at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

7 Essential Tips to Ensure Success with Requirements Management http://bit.ly/dc1zAS

Norcross, GA, July 27, 2010 -- -- Competitive Intelligence Software firm, "CI Radar", has just released new tracking and monitoring tools which cover the key vendors mentioned in the Forrester Research report, "CRM Suites For Midsize Organizations, Q2 2010" authored by William Band.

With so many addresses in your email list, it's easy to send an email to the wrong person or wrong account. We all do it once in a while. But what about vendors? How many support or sales teams get emails intended for someone else? TripIt is a wonderful service that I've been using since 2008. Just forward all your travel confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com to setup and maintain your itineraries. It's already a great product but their product teams have also been monitoring support logs to mine for additional requirements. Here's a common user problem: It looks like you may have mistakenly sent a booking confirmation email to our support email address (support@tripit.com or feedback@tripit.com). Please forward your original confirmation email to plans@tripit.com for processing. Sometimes when we suggest making support@tripit.com a "safe sender," our customers inadvertently (and understandably) use our support address instead of plans@tripit.com when forwarding booking confirmation emails. You might take this opportunity to add plans@tripit.com to your address book as well to prevent any confusion in the future. If you were trying to contact our support team, please reply to this email and a member of our support team will get back to you as soon as possible. How 'bout you? Are your customer support people encountering product problems that you're not hearing about? Go check with your support team. They are in communication with users (not buyers) and frequently have some insights on how to make your product even better. Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

The Devil's Advocate is a regular staffer in most offices. "Let me play Devil's Advocate" is a socially acceptable way to shoot down an idea. It's a guise that allows anyone to criticize an idea without offering an alternative. It's far easier (and safer) to tear down than to create. You can undermine what someone has just proposed without actually challenging them directly. via tomfishburne.com Sometimes we need someone to see the bad side of an idea. How it will be mis-interpreted. How it will be abused. How it will conflict with other initiatives. But first we need a team who will look for the good, will brainstorm the possibilities before everyone (or is it just the same someone?) starts taking shots at it. Are you the one who plays Devil's Advocate? Are you a permanent nay-sayer? If so, please stop. Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

As Clayton Christensen argues in the Innovator's Dilemma, the best move when the market is over-served is to innovate from below, not to join the new feature arms race. Less can be more. Simplicity is the killer app. http://www.tomfishburne.com/tomfishburne/2010/06/newfeaturitis.html Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Need help with your next launch? Check out http://pragmaticmarketing.typepad.com/launchclinic/ and http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/seminars/product-launch-essentials Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

July 27, 2010, 12:30 AM - IDG News Service - Ask.com hopes to tap the knowledge of its end users to provide better answers for people who ask questions at its website, the company will announce Tuesday.

Accept has invited me to participate in their webinar series on Transparency and Innovation – this Wednesday, July 28, 2010 (10AM Pacific, 1PM Eastern). Join us and join in! The Importance of Innovation and Transparency Cool, huh? :) Accept is hosting a free 5-part series on transparency, and has invited me to be one of their speakers. The other speakers [...]

I’ve been interviewing PMs for various positions within my company for the last several months and there’s a question that I think has produced some pretty intriguing answers. Image source: C&C Concept and Creation And the question is: What song best sums up your thoughts about product management and being a product manager? The question sounds silly, like one [...]

Product Manager is a critical role in our organization. and Knows Pragmatic Marketing’s Framework, and the Ultimate Question. If you have to ask, this job may not be the right one for you. Sorry. via careers-sage.icims.com Another excellent job description. Written in the language of the "buyer"--in this case, HR is looking to "buy" a product manager. Product management is indeed a critical role in a thriving company and it's great to see companies that appreciate it. Of course, we're always pleased when Pragmatic Marketing is part of a job listing (as it is... frequently.) Posted via email from Steve Johnson on product management

Standards-based family of dc-dc power converters boosts efficiency and reliability.

RT @sehlhorst: Rupert Murdoch – Zero; John Nash – One http://bit.ly/9A1R0N

As consultants and product managers, it is important that we quickly build and maintain credibility with our team so that we can work productively and effectively.   If you are unable to join the team dynamics, the work that we provide will be met with apathy or even outright hostility.  I’ve learned a few tips to help establish credibility [...]

From time to time, when I talk to other software product managers about their biggest challenge, often they say that managing internal stakeholder expectations is their biggest challenge. Yes, of course. After all, product management is like herding cats. Sales goes and makes promises to customers without asking the product group, marketing wants their projects [...]

Into every product manager’s life will arrive opportunities to make decisions, really, really important decisions. When this time comes, will you chose to take your product the right way or the wrong way? Perhaps more importantly, will you allow your customer to make the wrong decision with your product? A Tale Of Two Airlines If [...] Related posts:

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Essa semana tive a oportunidade de conversar com Gil Barros, um profissional muito experiente de design de interação e de arquitetura da informação, que está fazendo doutorado na FAU-USP sobre prototipação e o uso de croquis. …croquis (palavra francesa eventualmente aportuguesada como croqui ou traduzida como esboço ou rascunho) costuma se caracterizar como um desenho [...]

Delivering a "Wow" Customer Experience TechRepublic Rich Caballero, vice president of product management at Oracle, explains the difference between a miserable customer experience and a "wow" one. ... How to Improve Customer ServiceTechRepublic all 39 news articles »

Kalypso, the world's premier innovation consulting firm, is now accepting nominations for the first annual Spike Awards to recognize the best use of social media and social computing to improve innovation, product development, and product management.

How to Improve Customer Service TechRepublic Rich Caballero, vice president of product management at Oracle, explains how a good customer relationship management tool can please customers, while saving ... Delivering a "Wow" Customer ExperienceTechRepublic all 37 news articles »

msnbc.com

As BP Lays Out Future, It May Not Include Tony Hayward New York Times BP once billed itself as “Beyond Petroleum.” The question now is whether it is beyond repair — and who will try to fix it. BP's board of directors is meeting Monday, and the biggest topic on the agenda is the fate of Tony Hayward, ... Profile: Bob DudleyBBC News BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward May Quit Within Two Days, Telegraph SaysBloomberg BP's Board Is Negotiating Exit of CEO HaywardWall Street Journal Washington Post -The Guardian -USA Today all 791 news articles »

Delivering a "Wow" Customer Experience TechRepublic Rich Caballero, vice president of product management at Oracle, explains the difference between a miserable customer experience and a "wow" one. ...

All Things On Demand TechRepublic Adam May, director of product management at Oracle, explains how Oracle On Demand provides all of the business features users need, along with the instant ... and more »

You're at a networking event and a new acquaintance tells you that he or she is a project manager who was recently assigned a new project.

Executive Moves Crain's New York Business Nicolle Pangis, 31, was promoted to senior vice president of global product management. She formerly served as vice president of product management, ...

Delivering a "Wow" Customer Experience TechRepublic Rich Caballero, vice president of product management at Oracle, explains the difference between a miserable customer experience and a "wow" one. ... How to Improve Customer ServiceTechRepublic all 35 news articles »

How to Improve Customer Service TechRepublic Rich Caballero, vice president of product management at Oracle, explains how a good customer relationship management tool can please customers, while saving ...