Bridging the Gap - Education

Posted on July 30, 2006
Filed Under Open Source, Technology | 1 Comment

As organization continue to evolve or grow, technology acquisition becomes critical to their growth. With acquisition comes the problem of the ‘Assimilation Gap’ as described here. This post is part of the series titled, ‘Bridging the Gap’.

One of the Gaps identified with software acceptance/internalization is lack of training that focuses on adapting technology to their business needs. Users can only understand the value of a system to the degree to which they understand, its features, what it does and how it helps them. If users of information systems were polled, on what they value most in a system, the number one response may be ‘documentation’ or ‘training’. And by documentation or training, users are not asking for information about features in the system but more about mapping out the system functionality to their daily routine tasks. Educating the user base on this is critical to the acceptance of the system.

Product/Service vendors can address the Gap by providing ways to integrate the system features into the daily tasks of the user base, so as to enhance the productivity levels of the users. As their solutions continue to get bloated with more features, there also has to be an equivalent increase in their effort to educate the customer. Any negligence on their part will only widen the ‘Gap’ and soon it may become a real problem when customers no longer see value in the software because they just don’t understand it. Vendors, like Cignex, can provide multiple avenues for education - each designed to enhance user productivity. Cignex specifically has been at the forefront of education since 2000. Here are their achievements:

1. Has conducted over 500 trainings - covering Plone, JBoss, Alfresco.
2. Has Authored a book on leveraging the features of Plone.
3. Hosts and manages user groups for JBoss and Plone, in the Bay Area.
4. Enables sharing of ideas/code by being actively involved in the Plone community.

Open Source provides a perfect medium to collaborate on new features and best practices, versus an isolated attitude of the proprietary vendors. OS Vendors need to leverage on that and stay committed to the cause. With no technology to claim as theirs, OS vendors can only differentiate on service levels. Strategizing around Education & Training can prove to be a strong differentiator.

Articles in this series:

1. Bridging the Gap - Primer

Technorati Tags: Bridging the Gap, Open Source, Technology Adoption, Education, Training, Cignex

Bridging the Gap - Primer

Posted on July 13, 2006
Filed Under Open Source, Technology | 2 Comments

The open source(OS) movement began as an offshoot of the free software movement, aimed at making free software more appealing to commercial interests. As with every technology, its adoption typically follows a S-curve as illustrated in the figure (on the left). As the curve suggests, growth is slow at first, as the “geeks” get a hold of it and approve. Then there’s the rush by the mass market, which is when the downloads spike. Finally there’s the peak of acceptance, where the technology or process gets internalized.

Open source provides a wonderful opportunity for enterprises to do “try outs” via downloads. Mapping it to the S-curve, most OS applications are at best in the ‘trial use’ phase. However this widespread acquisition (via downloads) does not necessarily lead to deployment. There in exists a gap, as shown in the figure on the right, a ‘Gap’ between “knowing” the technology and actually “using” it (to an advantage). The Gap is no longer only about adoption, but more about acceptance and internalization. When the gap grows too wide, customers may no longer see value in it and the technology may end up on a shelf.

To address the gap, organizations need to enlist the help of service organizations who exist to assist them in bridging the gap. This post is a prelude to the series called ‘Bridging the Gap’, and on how Cignex (an OS pioneer in the ECM space) can help enterprises bridge the gap and promote the open source movement.

ps. Images courtesy of Mark Paulk of the Software Engineering Institute.

Technorati Tags: Bridging the Gap, Open Source, Technology Adoption, Assimilation Gap, S-Curve, Cignex