your view on product roadmaps

your view on product roadmaps

• callmekv

  We are a very small ISV too. We are currently doing a big move from one platform and vendor to another platform and vendor. The new platform is .NET and the vendor is Microsoft. We have planned this move for almost two years and have registered for the Empower program recently.
  We have been in business for 14 years. As such, changing products, partnerships, business model and business strategy is not an easy job. Roadmaps played an important role in our decision process.
  
  Concerning roadmaps,
  
  1. Valuable or not They have been most important to me. They have been important for us to find the right time to allocate resources for our project and the provide the basics for our big picture for the future.
  
  We started thinking about a business change about two years ago. We compared your roadmaps with ours to find out the right timing. Before we have taken any decisions we compared Microsoft's roadmaps with other information and analyst resources, of course.
  
  2. What is more important Both, product integration and estimated timelines. We have to coordinate our timelines with yours, but we also have to coordinate our product plans with your product integration. So really both matters.
  
  3. What format do you find most useful In principal all of them. Personally I most like the interactive presentations. However, sometimes it is not possible or I need them and get it on the web. I best like the PowerPoint presentations. They always provide a good overview. However, sometimes it is better to have a textual representation which often contains more background information.
  
  Personally I've been very happy with Microsoft roadmaps so far. They helped a lot with my planning. What matters, we have got anything we need to time we have planned.
  
  Concerning Empower and Team Editions/Foundation roadmaps, I've never set too much on them. Already 6 months ago I informed my team about some uncertainty and outdated information. However, like others, I'm somewhat unhappy with the current situation too.
  
  Even we rarely sold platform licenses we have a clear idea about how much revenue we generated for our former partner just through the consulting we provided and the applications we sold based on that partners products. And this is a big sum!
  
  The same will be true for Microsoft. Microsoft should be happy to get us on board. Despite from Operating systems and servers (which our customers in general needs anyway) we expect that Microsoft's profit from sales of middleware, SQL servers and Office products, generated in conjunction with our application, will be much higher than the profit we can make from our product. Our problem is, that even our customer needs the products in conjunction with our application, we don't profit from these sales, because our customers buy from their existing partners and distribution channels.
  
  From this point of view I think Microsoft could and should do a better job and support us even better in creating the best bug free and most professional software with the best tools available from Microsoft to do this challenging job.
  
  Peter

  
  

• CodePrince

  this is all great feedback... thanks and keep it coming!
  
  I'm working on a product roadmap that hopefully will be incorporated (all or in part) on the MSDN/ISV site at some point and your feedback will keep me on track.
  
  thanks,
  -brenda (ISV Buddy Team)
  
  

• bagira20572

  To answer the question from the standpoint of a potential Empower member, yes the roadmaps do add something to the equation. That being said the Team situation is actually worse then listed above. For 375 dollars our company can join the Empower program.  The most important thing for our company to get out of the program is Visual Studio at a reduced cost.  However, if we are only getting Pro and it is really a leased copy at that (the license expires at the end of the membership if you don't upgrade) it may not be worth it.  I can get a majority of the features in Pro for free by going to a launch and getting the Standard Edition.  Worse yet the primary reason I would join the Empower program at this point is to get early access to the software because Microsoft managed to launch a product without having any way to download a trial or buy a full edition of the product.  However the Empower program is currently not accepting new applications, because it is being retooled.  Not having access to the full edition of VS on the launch date actually hurt people like me who had CTP/Beta access but not MSDN access because our competitors who have MSDN access but didn't participate in the CTP builds were able to gain a month of catch up on us. At the same time we are stuck trying to make an Express Editon or CTP work for us.
  
  
  How does this relate to the RoadMap, well it might be worth being an Empower member for 1-2 years and a Partner after that IF Orcas is released in that time frame and we have CTP access.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

  
  

• Speech Pathologist

  pgloor wrote:

  The same will be true for Microsoft. Microsoft should be happy to get us on board. Despite from Operating systems and servers (which our customers in general needs anyway) we expect that Microsoft's profit from sales of middleware, SQL servers and Office products, generated in conjunction with our application, will be much higher than the profit we can make from our product. Our problem is, that even our customer needs the products in conjunction with our application, we don't profit from these sales, because our customers buy from their existing partners and distribution channels.

  
  This is off topic, but I wanted to let you know that I just learned about the "ISV Royalty Licensing" program. This is great news for us.
  

• *ferhat

  Well until recently I thought that they were very important, it was the roadmap for Visual Studio 2005 that led to our largest development project yet being started on beta2.  But then MS moved the goalposts and Empower and certified partners will not get the Team System we've used throughout beta.  Our decisions for development were done looking at the roadmap and knowing what we then new about the Empower and Certified Partner Benefits.  Now that the goal posts have changed and our tools are to be taken away, it makes the roadmap less interesting too.  What's the point in getting wrapped up in something that you are not going to be able to have at the end of the day anyway  
  
  Prior to this I'd have said that being able to see product integration and estimated timescales were of equal importance - at least to us.  I'm not too worried about the format it comes in.
  
  We are a very small ISV and our path towards certification has been hampered by starting not one but two companies with all the work that entails.  We wanted to be an MS house as MS seemed to have terrific products and be the ultimate in support for ISV's.  Thats all changing now and one of our team will this week be investigating Java and a tool and skills shift as a consequence.  We will almost certainly now look at cross skilling and cross tooling as a minimum, where before we only 'did' MS.   We had all embraced Team System even though the learning curve has been harder than we expected, but none of us are sure we want to continue working on dot net without it now.
  
  

• xpach

  I have to agree.  I've become extremely disgruntled about MS shifting the goalposts; giving us Visual Team System throughout the dev cycle, encouraging companies and Partners to use it for new products and then when it comes time to ship, decides that Partners don't get it unless they pony up more money.  Ridiculous and quite insulting.  We are a small ISV...Partnering with MS and achieving ISV competency took quite a bit of effort and money that we could have used elsewhere.  We were under the assumption that by Partnering with MS, we would be benefiting ourselves and our company. 
  
  Not getting Team System seems to be a slap in the face.  Not to mention, I STILL can't download the release of Team Edition for Developers.  It isn't on MSDN, it wasn't in the November shipment.  If I were a retail MSDN subscriber, I would already have it.  But being a (much more expensive) Partner, I am still lacking the tools I assumed we would have.  Very disheartening, Microsoft.  I've already been investigating open source tools to take the place of Team System and will be reevaluating the usefullness of Partnering with MS when the time comes for our renewal.
  
  
• your view on product roadmaps