telstarjohn - I agree that tranformation has to be driven top-down, but this does not mean selling technology directly to the CEO. No credible enterprise will adopt a new technology into their infrastructure without having IT's full endorsement ... that is why you see pilots and trials ad nauseum. It is why large organizations have CIO's and IT departments - their purvue is the selection, integration and deployment, and support of IT solutions.
What does facilitate the sales process for a new technology is the endorsement of large and credible IT consultancies and SI's - EDS as an example. These organization have the contacts, and the management, technical and financial resources needed to sustain the sales initiative and to guarantee implementation. The caveat is that to get these partners on-side requires the partner's recognition of the new solution's legitimacy and value, and a business model that enables them to make more money servicing the new solution than they can make with their legacy solutions, which will have to be abandoned (sometimes with contractual implications), i.e. it's not just a disruptive technology, it's a disruptive business model.
I see this as a significant gap for Wave at this time ... Dell is a great platform partner, but their services arm does not even rank in top 100 government integrators (courtesy of Ramsey's earlier post on top government integrators), let alone the top 10:
1 Northrop Grumman
2 Lockheed Martin
3 General Dynamics (Advanced Information Systems)
4 BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Services
5 Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC)
6 Boeing
7 IBM Global Services
8 Computer Science Corp. (CSC)
9 L-3 Titan Group (Government Services)
10 EDS
Adoption curves for new paradigms are torturously long - that's the fact. Wave is focused on the supply channel, correctly IMO.
cliff
