The Approach
The salesman goes through several task steps, startign with gathering information about the customers, the industry and the business filed relevant to the engagement - SCM. As well as the products and the services available to meet the customer's needs. References might also be sought to colleagues who might have useful expertise to share.
Using several tools, the salesman searches internal and Web information resources for electronic and non-electronic artefacts, often generated as a result of previous projects and distributed in a variety of ways. Over time, the salesman acquires information relevant to the customer engagement and may create a dedicated project workplace in which to collect and organise these resources. This workplace supports further project activities, such as creating presentations or carrying out analyses needed as input for proposals, budgets and project timelines. These activities involve soliciting information from other colleagues and experts via email, scheduling meetings and teleconferences, distributing various artefacts, and saving information in a project workplace for review and coauthorship.
When the FUD hits the fan
The recent suit from Santa Cruz Operations, or SCO, against IBM for US1 billion, claiming that Linux violates key Unix copyrights, is creating quite a buzz here in Silicon Valley.
Although Unix was actually created by AT&T Bell Labs over 25 years ago, the core Unix IP licence eventually ended up at SCO, which has now determined that various codes within Linux was actually lifted from Unix and they now want not only IBM to pay up, but are considering going after other companies who use Linux to pay a licence to them as well.
Not long after the SCO suit was announced, Microsoft stated that they would pay SCO a licence fee to cover any issues relating to Unix and in essence, gave their endorsement of SCO's claims. This of course was, at the very least, a brilliant public relations move, since it not only added weight to SCO's claim, but also introduced FUD into this issue.
FUD is a widely used marketing trick which stands for "fear, uncertainty and doubt", and is used often to combat a competitor's new product that comes out before a company's own product hits the market.
Although IBM, and even Novell, are adamant about SCO's claims being unfounded, once it becomes a legal issue, FUD kicks in and this uncertainty about any serious legal fallout has now created enough doubt in IT manager's minds that they clearly need to proceed with caution before making Linux a greater part of their overall IT program.
What makes it even worse for IT decision makers is that a suit like this could take at least a year to resolve, and most likely could be in the courts even longer.
It does not appear that SCO will back down from IBM or anyone else and plan to take their claims to the courts. Consequently, you can expect "FUD" on this issue to be around for some time.
Tim Bajarin
President Creative Strategies
A US consulting firm
bajarin@creativestrategies.com
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