With Oracle OpenWorld just around the corner & MySQL Connect already underway I can’t believe yet another year has passed.  This is my third OOW and I must have a following as folks are already reaching out to me on twitter @pythiansimmons (log buffer lady seems to be a handle I can’t seem to shake). [...]

Read the original article at Consulting essentials: Getting the business

Over the years, a lot of people have approached me asking how to become a tech consultant. What do I need to do to get started? How can I take my first step?

I also hear from managers and CEOs that have asked how I got my start, and how I keep the business running. What lessons from consulting can be applied to startups and small businesses? Having worked independently for many years I’ve built up my own cache of strategies and methods which I hope can be helpful to anyone looking to strike it out on their own.

This

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You might have noticed that this blog changed name and URL. Instead of having one single blog for everything, I decided to split my blogging activities in two separate blogs.

If you're interested in MySQL, Oracle, Databases, Business Intelligence, Open Source, Cloud, etc. this is the place to be. Blog's new name is Data & Co.
A big "Thank you!" to David Stokes who moved all the planet.mysql.com references to the old blog to this new one.

On the other hand, if you'd like to read about communication, marketing, advertising, PR, soft skills, etc. feel free look at Publicime.  Please see the introduction of my new blog




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I see so many posts on what happened to company X, product Y and dream Z that I couldn't resist the temptation to summarize this great year for MySQL. At the end of 2010, Oracle did an announcement we were all waiting for: MySQL 5.5 is GA! Another year has passed since then and it's time to reflect on what has been done.

I know this is a long post. I tried to rewrite it at least 10 times to make it shorter, but I couldn't condense the list. Hence, I wrote a summary in the beginning for those who don't want to read it all.

I believe that 2011 was an exceptional year for MySQL and I really enjoy being part of this team. I wish all of us a lot of success and fun in the years to come!

Summary:







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Today, more and more proprietary software vendors are choosing to go Open Source. Doing this enables them to leverage the community benefits of Open Source, shorten the sales cycle, and gain a competitive advantage over other proprietary products.

However, for those firms considering a switch to Open Source, there are some hard decisions to make with regard to their product architecture. Should they provide only a single Open Source product, and earn revenue from add-on services like support and consulting

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Here's an interview with Nicolas Pujol who has written an excellent new book called "The Mind Share Market."  Nicolas and I were colleagues at MySQL for several years and we often discussed the role of our free open source product as a way to gain market share in the commercial sector.  In MySQL's case, our goal was to be the #1 choice for web developers

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I admit this is not closely related to my day-by-day activities, but I find the experiment interesting.

MySQL is the most popular open source database, particularly in the Web. Both twitter and facebook are avid users of MySQL. MySQL has influenced plenty of projects, has contributed to the creation of a multiplicity of social networks and it's behind many intriguing entrepreneurial ideas. The question is: how influential are you?

Fast Company started a project to measure how much we influence the online communities. Here is the description coming from their website.

We started with a simple

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I’ve just published an article that explains how a PHP-based product can gain a good position in the market and be made appealing to customers by using marketing communication. The focus is on products licensed under an Open Source license. Yet, most of the recommendations also apply to proprietary offerings.

The article has initially been published in German by PHPmagazin. It has now been translated to English and is available on the Initmarketing website: Commercialization of PHP Software.

In the information age, everyone collaborates on this worldwide knowledge exchange channel that's called Internet. Computing devices are proliferating and all interactions are finding a common home: the net. It binds us in a way that was inconceivable only a few years ago. I can stay up to date on what my US or Japan colleagues are doing. I can read articles and thoughts written in unknown cities all around the globe.

We are all on the web; MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/) is so popular because of the web I'll say. Whether you have a small niche blog or you are a famous writer in your field of expertise, you should care about analyzing your readers. This becomes more important if you are a company willing to publicize products

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Now why would I do that, especially when my blog is syndicated through it? Simple. I’m always trying to cut back on RSS and other “stuff.” Less is more. But don’t worry — I subscribed again. Only this time, I subscribed to my own filtered version of it! I built it [...]

Rob Young has posted a few blog entries lately on the MySQL Enterprise monitoring software. His latest post claims that agent-based monitoring is equivalent to extensibility (MySQL Enterprise Monitor: Agent = Extensibility). I think this is conflating two completely distinct properties of a monitoring solution. Cacti is extremely extensible, with a plugin-based architecture and [...]

There are quite a few business angles you might see only if you’re here at the conference, and you won’t get from blogs. For example, let’s take a look at the contents of the shoulder bags they hand out with your registration. (This is only a partial list.)

• SnapLogic’s flyer gets it right: their system is compatible with “GNU Linux.” Hooray, a commercial company acknowledging the GNU operating system for what it is!
• MySQL Enterprise’s flyer has three big bullet points: MySQL Load Balancer, MySQL Connection Manager, and MySQL Enterprise Monitor Query Analyzer. The first two look like they’re probably built on MySQL Proxy. The last has a visual explain plan feature, which according to an elevator conversation is not yet built. I’ll stop by their booth and see. As you may know,

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CMSWire asked me to be the first they interview for their brand new column Flash Quiz. If you ever wondered how much I sleep and whether I like fancy cars, check out Flash Quiz: Sandro Groganz Speaks.

The potential for successfully building or extending a corporate identity based on Open Source depends on a company’s relationship towards an Open Source product. The graph below relates the extend of product ownership to the level of awareness potentially available for marketing:

Basically, the more you own the product, i.e. the more it is directly correlated to your company, the more you can make out of it.

If you’re the creator of the product (e.g. MySQL, the company, is the creator of MySQL, the database), you can utilize maximum awareness in your market. Your whole ecosystem will support your marketing efforts. For example, those providing extensions to your product, will automatically market

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Zack has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Marketing. Go Zack. You're the best person for the job.

Zend recently decided to not call themselves the creators of PHP anymore. This change in Zend’s marketing has been long overdue. It caused friction with some PHP core developers over the past years that spread into the PHP community.

Others also make mistakes

It is not that Zend is the only company in the Open Source market that made some marketing mistakes in the past. MySQL for example had their CTO Monty Widenius talk fancier then usual in an internally conducted interview and the answers did not sound like he really said them. It made known members of the MySQL community wonder who kidnapped Monty.

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