Visio tests a "made-to-order" sales model.(Company
Business and Marketing)
Like many publishers, Visio Corp. has seen its core product become
relentlessly more complex and feature-rich. Early versions of
Visio's drawing and diagramming program shipped with a few
libraries . . .
Checklist: online reseller channels.
Six months ago, PGSoft president Gary Gysin faced a tough question:
How to get retail distribution for a new file recovery utility his
company had just launched. "Utilities are a tough market . . .
Merger tactics: how to protect human assets.(Industry Trend or
Event)
In an increasingly tight labor market, a small company's
employees are sometimes its most valuable asset--more valuable to an
acquirer than technology, products, or customers. "The old theory
was . . .
AN EXIT STRATEGY FOR EVERY PRODUCT PLAN.(product development
strategy)(Industry Trend or Event)
The ideal time to think about killing a product, says entrepreneur
Mitch Russo, is "before a single line of code has been
written." When he was still running TimeSlips Corp., Russo and his
partner . . .
HOW TO MANAGE A DIVESTITURE.(the Symantec model)(Industry Trend
or Event)
Symantec Corp. is well known for its aggressive approach to
acquisitions. But Symantec has also shut down or spun off a fair number
of products that have become unprofitable. Dave Daetz, senior . . .
SUNSET SCENARIOS: HOW TO MANAGE OBSOLETE
PRODUCTS.(obsolescence)(Industry Trend or Event)
Sooner or later, it has to happen: Last year's roaring success
has now moved into zombie-land. Resellers won't promote it, support
costs are beginning to exceed revenues, and the programmers spend . . .
The Softletter 100, published annually since 1984, is defined
formally as "a ranking of the top 100 personal computer software
c
NOTES ON METHODOLOGY
Our basic eligibility rules are simple: To be ranked, a company
must be an independent, U.S.-based company (subsidiaries do not qualify)
that generates at least 50% of its . . .
THE 1999 SOFT-LETTER 100.(top 100 software companies)(Industry
Trend or Event)
Like any other business, software companies compete against each
other for customers, employees, and investment dollars; they grow
quickly when market conditions are healthy, and struggle when . . .
DATA POINTS SOURCES OF WEB TRAFFIC.(Illustration)
How do consumers discover new Web destinations? According to a new
study from Forrester Research, search engines still hold a commanding
lead among the "most frequent" sources of Web referrals . . .
NIEHAUS RYAN.(Brief Article)
NIEHAUS RYAN principal Bill Ryan on the public relations strategy
that made Marimba co-founder Kim Polese more famous than her company:
"We as an agency have always pushed the idea of the CEO as . . .
MICROSOFT.(quality standards)(Product Information)(Brief
Article)
MICROSOFT president Steve Ballmer on what he learned when he asked
customers and employees about his company's quality standards:
"I was shocked at the number of people who told me I should go to . . .
SUN MICROSYSTEMS.(Brief Article)
SUN MICROSYSTEMS chief technical officer Bill Joy on corporate
cultures that encourage a "wild side": "Some companies
are just too well planned. I don't expect any great innovation to
come out of . . .
DATA POINTS: LARGEST ONLINE RESELLERS.(Industry Trend or
Event)(Brief Article)
The Web is growing explosively as a distribution channel for PC
products, but many online resellers are new companies whose actual sales
volume remains a mystery. One glimmer of light comes from . . .
HOW TO BUILD A BETTER VAR NETWORK.(Industry Trend or
Event)
"The VAR channel is one of the great mysteries of life,"
says Liz Coker of Channel Tactics. "Every six months, there's
a new group of companies who jump into the business, and no one's
really sure . . .
WHY ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD.(investing in startups)(Industry Trend
or Event)
When Mitch Russo sold his first software company, Timeslips Corp.,
he decided to reinvest some of the proceeds in "angel"
deals--startups that weren't quite ready for professional venture
capital . . .
A MISSION STATEMENT WITH MUSCLE.(PowerQuest )(Company
Operations)
PowerQuest president Bill Bennett carries around little laminated
cards imprinted with his company's new mission statement, and he
hands them out with more than a touch of evangelical . . .
APPLE COMPUTER advertising.
APPLE COMPUTER advertising (9/27/97): "Here's to the
crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs
in a square hole, the ones who see things differently. They're not
fond . . .
DATA POINTS: WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE AD WARS.(CMP Media and
Ziff-Davis)(Industry Trend or Event)
It's belt-tightening time for much of the PC press. CMP Media
and Ziff-Davis, two of the industry's three biggest trade
publishers, have recently suffered painful declines in ad revenues, and
CMP . . .
GUY KAWASAKI: ON AVOIDING "DEATH MAGNETS".(Rules for
Revolutionaries)
Like many of the people who took part in the launch of the
Macintosh, Guy Kawasaki has spent almost a decade pondering the tenuous
link between corporate sanity (which Apple often conspicuously . . .
AN ADVERTISING-BASED MODEL FOR PRODUCTIVITY
SOFTWARE.(Andover.net)(Company Business and Marketing)
"Advertising pays for TV and radio content," says Adam
Green, "so why not software?" This isn't just a
rhetorical question for Green: His company, Andover.net, has just
launched a Web-based . . .
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