Strategic Marketing Plan 2010

[Pages:58]1 Strategic Marketing 2 Plan 2010

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2005-2010

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Conference 2004

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Version 0.5. Copyright ?2004 John McCreesh jpmcc@ for and on behalf of the

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Marketing Project. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary...............................................................................................1

Community Review................................................................................................2 History.....................................................................................................................................2 Goals ......................................................................................................................................2

Market Review....................................................................................................... 5 Overview.................................................................................................................................5 Market Segmentation..............................................................................................................5 Disruptive Marketing...............................................................................................................7

Product Review.....................................................................................................9 Summary.................................................................................................................................9 Distribution.............................................................................................................................9 Features and Benefits............................................................................................................10

Competitor Review...............................................................................................12 Microsoft Office.....................................................................................................................12 WordPerfect Office.................................................................................................................14 Lotus SmartSuite...................................................................................................................15 Other Office Suites................................................................................................................15 Other Competitors.................................................................................................................15

Market Segmentation........................................................................................... 17 Introduction...........................................................................................................................17 Target Markets.......................................................................................................................17 Non-target Markets................................................................................................................17 Government..........................................................................................................................18 Education..............................................................................................................................19 Public Libraries......................................................................................................................21 Not-for-Profits (NFPs).............................................................................................................23 Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs).........................................................................................24 OEMs.....................................................................................................................................26 Linux Distributions................................................................................................................27

Review of the External Environment.....................................................................28 Social and Cultural Environment...........................................................................................28 Technological Environment....................................................................................................28 Economic Environment .........................................................................................................29 Political and Legal Environment.............................................................................................29

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats....................................................30 SWOT Analysis......................................................................................................................30 SWOT Recommendations......................................................................................................32

Goals and Objectives............................................................................................ 34 Usage Goals..........................................................................................................................34 Marketing Objectives.............................................................................................................35 Marketing Project..................................................................................................................35

Strategic Proposals.............................................................................................. 38 Community............................................................................................................................38 Product..................................................................................................................................38 Price......................................................................................................................................39 Distribution (Place)................................................................................................................39 Promotion..............................................................................................................................41

Appendix - Building the Plan................................................................................. 47 Plan for the Plan....................................................................................................................47 Strategy Development..........................................................................................................47 Contributors..........................................................................................................................48 Copyright..............................................................................................................................48 Version History......................................................................................................................48

Alphabetical Index...............................................................................................49

References..........................................................................................................51

1 Executive Summary

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This document marks a major milestone in the development of a

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Strategic Marketing Plan for the office productivity

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suitei. Its publication is timed to coincide with the

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Conference 2004 (OOoCon 2004). Previous versions have had

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restricted circulation within the Marketing Project; this

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version launches the consultation process with the whole

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Community, aiming for a formal submission to the

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Community Council at the end of 2004.

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The Plan looks at the current market for office productivity suites, at

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the major players in the field, and seeks to identify trends which will

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influence the market over the next five years. It looks at

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's place within the market now, and where it should

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aim to be by 2010.

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The analysis looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the

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suite and of the Community, and how these should

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help influence the Community's response to opportunities and threats

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in the marketplace.

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It also looks in detail at the features of and the

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benefits these deliver to customers. From this analysis, the Plan

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identifies a number of target markets whose needs are most closely

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matched by the benefits provided by .

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Finally, the Plan sets targets for penetration by into

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these target markets, and lists the main strategies which the

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Marketing Project will use to achieve these goals. It looks at the

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governance of the Community, and the changes necessary for it to be

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able to deliver the Plan. Subsequent versions will give implementation

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milestones for the five years of the Plan.

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The authors would like to thank all the members of the Marketing

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Project and other Community members who have contributed to this

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Plan to date. We look forward to starting a vigorous debate at OOoCon

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2004 in Berlin. As the Plan evolves, the latest version will be available

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on the Marketing Project web site .

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Comments and contributions are always invited to the Marketing

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Project's strategy discussion forum - see the Project pages for an

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archive and details of how to participate.

i This document is not a Strategic Marketing Plan for the Community, which is an entity which requires marketing in its own right

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1 Community Review

2 History

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StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software, was founded in

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Germany in the mid-1980s. Its StarOffice product developed over the next decade

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into a fully-fledged office productivity suite (spreadsheet, word processor, graphics,

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presentations) comprising over 7.5 million lines of code, and equalling in

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functionality the market-leading product (Microsoft Office).

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The company was acquired by Sun Microsystems Inc during the summer of 1999,

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and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 20001. That same year, Sun made the

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momentous decision to open-source2 the product as 1.0 and kick-

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start the Community (the Community) to support, develop, and

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promote the software under open-source principles3. At the same time, Sun decided

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to use the same codebase as the foundation for the continuing commercial

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StarOffice product.

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The Communityii was set up with the following mission statement:

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Mission Statement

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To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on

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all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-

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component based APIs and an XML-based file format.

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Success Criteria

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The Community's Success Criteria are derived directly from the mission statement:

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(1)to grow a world wide Community capable of maintaining, developing, supporting,

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and promoting

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(2)to develop to provide all the features expected from a world class

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office productivity suite

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(3)to grow the market share of to a position of leadership

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(4)to design to support easy translation into any language

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(including complex text and vertical writing languages), and provide translations

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and support in local languages worldwide

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(5)to encourage porting to any computing platform capable of running the software

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(MS-Windows - all variants; Unix variants - e.g. Sun Solaris; Linux - all significant

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distributions; Apple Mac; etc)

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(6)to architect on a modular basis, callable from all major

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programming languages, and document fully all APIs4

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(7)to store all data in published XML formats and work with

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standards bodies to ensure compliance with emerging standards for office

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documents5

ii In this document, the term is always used to mean the software; the term the Community is used to refer to the project.

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Community Goals

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Financial Independence

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There are various business models for sustaining open-source activities. One model,

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used by Red Hat, is to charge customers subscription fees for services and support

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around free software. Open-source database company MySQL has a commercial

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licence for customers who want a support contract and a separate open-source

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licence6. Other companies, such as toolmaker Zend Technologies, charge for

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commercial products that are more functional than the open-source versions of

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their software. The Linux kernel itself is now developed largely by corporate

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employees7.

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As of today (2004), both and the Community are heavily dependent

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on the support of Sun for their continued survival. The Community has set itself a

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challenge to become completely self-sufficient, and rely on volunteer effort and/or

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funds generated by the Community. Given the changing patterns within the global

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IT industry, this is a desirable position for the Community to be in. However, the

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challenge of reaching full financial and legal autonomy is not to be underestimated.

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Organisational Maturity

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As of summer 2004, some projects within the Community are well-supported and

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successful - for example, the native language projects are providing support for

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over 30 languages. Overall the Community is still immature in terms of governance,

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organisation, and ability to reach consensus and mobilise around an agreed plan.

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The creation of this Strategic Marketing Plan by the Community's Marketing Project

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(the Project) is part of this Community development process. It is recognised that

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the Community itself will need to change in order to adopt this Plan and those from

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other projects.

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Marketing Goals

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The Project has sole or joint responsibility for the first five of the success criteria

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listed above. In the five years since launch, has been highly

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successful in attracting downloads8 and distribution. However, its share of the

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global office productivity suite market is probably no more than a few percent9, with

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Microsoft's Office product (MS-Office) the firmly entrenched market leader.

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Studies have shown the difficulty of replacing an established brand leader in

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conventional products. For example, one study was made of 25 brands that held

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the number one position. Sixty years later, 20 of those 25 brands still held the

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number one position. Similarly, studies show that historically, the top three brands

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in a product category typically occupy market share in a ratio of 4:2:1. Gartner

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Group predicted in May 2002 that the codebase could eventually

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reach 10% market share10.

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On the other hand, academics such as Christensen have demonstrated that under

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certain conditions, newcomers can dethrone even the most firmly entrenched

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market leader (see A Game Plan for Disruptive Marketing on page 8). The project

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believes that with targeted marketing, can fit the criteria of being a

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'disruptive technology', and that the ambition of being 'the leading international

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office suite' is achievable within the five year timescales of this Plan.

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By 2010, the Project's goal is for the codebase to be in a position of

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market leadership (>50%) in all its target markets; for it to be the office suite of

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choice for a majority of all PC users; and for it to be in use by a significant

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percentage (>40%) of all office users worldwide. The analysis behind these targets

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is explained in Target 2010 on page 35).

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