Birth is a messy operation. The creative process is messy. A software application that is gonna scale better not be messy.

Giving birth to a new software application puts you in the very zen-like place of being both messy / not messy.

Does anyone hear the sound of one hand clapping?

ArcStone is in the final pangs of the Wonderfile birth process. We have our first paying Wonderfile customers - yeah! We have a number of consulting projects that leverage Wonderfile’s SOA (Service Oriented Architecture - in plain English: using web services to access Wonderfile functionality from any web site). And we find ourselves in the unique position of having developed a really useful tool - a fantastic, shiny Swiss army knife for tagging and file management.

We love it, we understand it - the tool works for us - but we’re finding that those who jump into Wonderfile just don’t get it.

I have come to realize, that most of our clients aren’t ready for Wonderfile as a general tool. They just don’t have the time or inclination to fully grok it - there’s no way there gonna buy it.

I know that our customers (and people in general) will buy a solution to a specific problem. People will visit Google and look for solutions to ease their pain / scratch that itch.

What is more likely to happen? Xavier has to manage leases for his company - keeping track of all the docs, expirations, etc. He goes to Google - does he search on “file management keyword search tagging reminders” or “lease management systems”? My money is on “lease management systems” - he has an itch that needs scratching in specific terms, not general. The more specific we can be with Wonderfile driven apps and Wonderfile marketing - the more successful we’ll be.

That’s our charter and the next round of work for us - tailoring Wonderfile and marketing it to solve specific problems in specific markets.

The product development folks call this “development to commercialization” - I call it ArcStone’s biggest marketing challenge for 2008.

Wonderfile driven apps - coming soon to a web site near you.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.