Have you noticed the change in Microsoft's messaging recently? There have been several article similar to this one:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx

They all have the same tone. "We make more $ than x so it doesn't matter if x is getting good press." 

I'm not predicting the end of Microsoft because with that much cash and a monopoly position in desktop operating systems they will be around for a long time to come. What I am predicting is that Microsoft has now officially become IBM. When Microsoft was young they vowed to fight against 'Big Blue' and their corporate values of profits over innovation. 

The press from Microsoft recently is not about how happy their customers are, how innovative their products are or how they've driven prices down for consumers like Walmart proclaims. Instead, the press is self serving and arrogant. It appears that the posting of major financial number is aimed more at keeping employees from jumping ship to Google, Apple or their own web startups.

Yet, Microsoft's stock is flat. As flat as it has been since Gates handed the helm over to Ballmer. With record financial number you'd expect Wall Street to boost stock prices every quarter. Why isn't that happening? 

I suspect that analysts on Wall Street see the same thing that I do. Microsoft isn't exciting to developers. Developers were the driving focus for Gates and despite Ballmer's 'Developers, Developers, Developers' chant he doesn't back it up with actions. Without developer support Microsoft will wither into a corporate safe option and eventually transition from a software company to a services company like IBM.

The sad part is that Microsoft has really smart people and has a really great development stack with .NET. I love working with .NET but the pressure from SPLA licensing for Windows Server products, increased partner program requirements and lack of web innovation is forcing me to consider alternatives.

To me, it looks like they've run their course. They have the monopoly and there is no where else to grow without squeezing every nickle and dime out of their customers and developers.  They aren't executing in Mobile, they aren't innovating on the web and desktops are going to become a smaller market faster than many people think. Unless Ballmer retires and a software guy (Maybe Ray Ozzie) steps up to steer things in the right direction, Microsoft will soon be 'Big Blue 2.'

I would like to take a moment and thank Microsoft for driving away developers. The .NET framework is an awesome application stack, ASP.NET was incredible when it first came out and ease of administration on SQL Server is near perfect. But like all good technology from Microsoft, it is quickly ruined by MBAs hoping to squeeze out another record-breaking quarter on Wall Street. 

ASP.NET has been responsible for bringing more new developers to Microsoft than any other recent product. Sharepoint looks like it's on fire too. What do these products have in common? They are web based applications. Every major company that runs Microsoft has Office and Windows licenses. They aren't hiring millions of new employees for whom they need to purchase new licenses. But, those same companies and millions of smaller ones are creating thousands of new web sites every day. Existing web sites are growing too, and that means more web servers running Windows.

Apache is the world's most popular web server. Unlike desktop operating systems where Microsoft holds a 90%+ monopoly, they should be fighting for market share in servers. But they aren't. Instead they are attempting to squeeze every last nickle and dime out of their web developers through SPLA licensing. This ingeniuous program forces anyone running an IIS web site to pay Microsoft every month for each processor or user that access the site. No exception. The EULA for Windows Server (emphasis on the SERVER part) does not actually allow you to run a server except on an internal network. External servers are subject to SPLA licensing. Let me repeat that. You CAN NOT purchase a copy of Windows Server for a one time fee and run a web application on it. 

I'm getting very tired of getting the monthly shakedown from Don Balmer. 

So Thanks Microsoft! Instead of reasonable licensing that would encourage adoption of your web server platform you're driving developers away. I really like .NET but I'm not sure I like it enough to deal with your MBA thugs. 

I'll be attending the Internet Retailer Conference from June 15th to 18th, 2009 in Boston. If you are in the area or going to the conference drop me a line and we can meet up. 

For the last 8 years I have provided FREE service packs and updates for each version of BV Commerce. During that time BV Commerce has grown in size and features. It integrates with many outside systems like UPS, shippers, Authorize.net, credit card gateways, tax services, QuickBooks and more. The effort required to keep up with these features has grown exponentially.

In order to keep up with integrations and add new features to BV Commerce I have introduced an annual maintenance plan. The plan will ensure that I can maintain BV Commerce going forward, complete PCI Certification and add new features for FREE for those customers subscribing to the maintenance plan.

In The Matrix, the lead character NEO has the ability to view a computer generated world like no other inhabitant. He sees the inner workings of the system and can manipulate them because of this information.

I was happily churning out some code this morning when “blink!” Out went the power. I remembered the power company calling a few days ago with some message about replacing a part in the substation for my neighborhood. Great! I was just getting into the zone.

As I left and headed for Panera to scoop up some free internet access with my coffee I realized that the army of power company workers must have a completely unique view of the world. I drive by those little (or big) green boxes sprouting up from every neighborhood in the area without noticing them. I’m sure the power workers key in on them as though they were bright pink. They “see” a different world than most people because they know what to look for.

Other professions are similar. A cop on the beat keys in on certain behaviors and mannerisms to locate suspects. An ER doctor picks up on clues to a patient’s condition that might go unnoticed by others. A ship captain “reads” the waves and knows when trouble is over the horizon.

How do you view the Matrix? What unique things do you notice and how can you take advantage of them?

The Richmond Software Craftsman Group had our monthly meeting last night and we discussed developer productivity. Lines of Code (LOC) was suggested as the common measure of productivity. I think everyone quickly agreed that LOC produced was not really a good measure of effeciency. You'll quickly end up with bloated code because the measurement says that it is preferred.

Measuring team performance seems to be easier than individual productivity and I think this is what should be measured:

1) On Time
2) On Budget
3) Product Does what was expected (This would include a measure of defects for quality).
4) Client satisfaction with what was delivered.


- On Time: Did the team estimate the project well. Steve McConnell has a great book on software estimation and a lot of it boils down to "engineers are overly optimistic even when they think they're not."

- On Budget: Almost a directly correlation to time but if you use double to resources planned to hit a target your budget it blown. Budget should be a function of work estimates and timeline.

- Product does what was expected: Did you deliver everything that you said you would? Do the features do what they are expected to do. If features are buggy they do not do what was expected. I'm thinking this is kind of like acceptable failure rate in manufacturing. NASA will pay big bucks to have a very low bug rate but Joe's flower mart down the street might accept a higher bug rate in exchange for a much lower budget. Developers should set an expected defect rate that isn't zero because it's not realistic.

- Client satisfaction: This measures a couple of things. Did you accurately capture requirements from the customer? Did you communicate what you are going to build effectively so that client expectations are set correctly? Does the client understand the expected bug rate in the finished product and how it will affect timeline and price?


I think that inside a team it can be much more difficult to measure productivity because each team member influences the others. If a hole punch machine in the factory is misaligned the rubber gasket machine may produce defective parts. The gasket machine had garbage in so it gave garbage out. One programmer building a crucial module can delay other programmers making it very difficult to measure the individual productivity. Network effects can influence the team in positive and negative ways.

BV Commerce 5 offers "anonymous" checkout. I'm not sure what to call the feature other than "anonymous." Maybe "guest" checkout is more appropriate because you still collect the name and address of the customers. The feature was designed so that customers were not required to create an account during the checkout process.

Jared M. Spool of User Interface Engineering recently posted an article explaining that making it clear that registration was not required during checkout boosted one of their client's web sales by 300 million dollars. What UIE did was to change the text of a button from "Register" to "Continue" which was seen as less intrusive by shoppers during the checkout process. A simple change that had the effect of making the login step optional.

There are plenty of reasons to require customers to register during checkout. On the BV Software Store we require customers to create an account because we sell electronic goods and have found that when customers explicitly create their own account it is easier for them to remember later. This saves us some support requests about usernames and passwords. Also, our audience tends to be fairly technical and isn't afraid of creating accounts.

If your store requires registration during checkout think carefully about exactly why you require it. You may be losing a significant number of sales because of it.

Have you seen this man before? According to his bio page the Video Professor has been seen by more than 90 million people. Until recently his sales pitch appears to have been targeted at senior citizens. "It's so easy, just follow by step by step video instructions, etc. etc." But, today I saw a Video Professor ad with a different sales pitch.

"Use the video professor to learn new computer skills. When you know advanced Microsoft Office skills you can get a higher paying job. Retrain for a new career."

This guy knows his audience. He knows that many of the people watching his TV ads have lost their job, have a fear of losing their job or having financial problems in the current economy. Here's a "free" lesson (which is entirely paid for by the shipping and handling fee) to help you through the tough times.

How could you improve your conversion rates by changing your marketing and sales pitches based on time? When I worked for Fry 1-800-Flowers received a relatively moderate amount of traffic until the month before Valentine's day. Then all hell broke loose and we fired up extra servers like crazy. What times of the year are slow for sales? How can you improve sales by targeting an event, a season, a day and focusing on it? What if you created a new holiday based on your product line?

Could you change your featured products based on the weather of a visiting customer? Check the weather database against the IP location and display your best umbrella to shoppers having a rainy day. Would that boost conversions?

How about time of day? Infomercials have known for years that late night and early morning hours put our minds in a more receptive state to purchase crazy kitchen gadgets we'll use once and then throw in a drawer. Could you offer an "insomniac special" to customers shopping late at night in their time zone?

How about this Chicago Furniture store? "We sell more seats than the governor." An ad sure to get attention because of it's timely reference to the state governor's controversial senate seat appointment.

 What else could you do to improve your sales by linking marketing to timely events?

My blog subscribers are still fairly small but growing and I'd like to send my appreciation to everyone who has subscribed. I'm going to give you a little preview of what BV has in store for 2009 and I'm not posting it anywhere else until much later.

This year I tried an experiment with BV Commerce pricing. Dropping the price from $999 to $499 but also separating out support. This was an effort to tie the cost of support directly to the amount of effort required by our team to provide the support. For those customers who don't use a lot of support they end up with a much cheaper software license. Those customers who need a lot of support time pay for it directly without the cost being spread among all BV customers. The experiment has worked pretty well but it doesn't address the other big variable cost: service packs.

Service Packs, upgrades and support questions over the years have led me to see there are two distinct groups of customers that use BV Commerce. The first group are merchants and non-programmers who are most interested in the business of running an online store. The second group are developers, hosts and tinkerers who use BV Commerce as a toolkit to create customized stores.

The merchant group is not interested in technical details like what language the software is written in, ssl certificates, IIS settings or load balancing. They just want a package that works out of the box and with a few minor theme changes is ready to go.

The developer group is very interested in the technical details and has specific technical goals for the software. They may want to customize a feature, create new layouts and themes from scratch or integrate parts of BV Commerce into an existing web site and just utilize the checkout process.

Sometime in 2009 I will be splitting BV Commerce into two distinct solutions. BV Commerce Service (BVC Service) and BV Commerce Toolkit (BVC Toolkit). BV Commerce Service is targeted to merchants who want a hosted application that is managed by BV Software and does not require any technical effort. BV Commerce Toolkit is the renamed BV Commerce of today with extended support and documentation options for developers. I've heard many times that developer documentation is lacking and one of the core focuses of the BVC Toolkit is extended samples and documentation for the APIs and source code.

I can already hear hosts and designers screaming that we're pulling a LaGarde and trying to kill off our partner channel. This isn't true for a couple of reasons. First, BV Commerce Service will only have a subset of the features in BV Commerce. The merchant group can live with a simplified feature set while they get a store started and can later upgrade to a custom solution using BVC Toolkit. Second, when the split happens we will no longer be providing consulting services or custom programming to merchants directly. We will refer all custom programming requests to our partner companies and anyone interested in BVC Toolkit will see our partner company's services promoted heavily. Third, BVC Service is NOT a replacement for BV Commerce. Existing BV Commerce customers who are hosted with our partner companies have no motivation or reason to switch to BVC Service. They are already getting more than what the service will provide from their current host. Fourth, BVC Service is just that, a service and not a software package. No source code or license is available and there will always be a large segment of customers who want to own a software license and/or control their own hosting environment.

As 2009 rolls around I'll be providing some more information about the new offerings.

In summary, the new BVC Service and BVC Toolkit solutions will offer better options for merchants and better options for developers. If you have any questions, concerns or comments feel free to respond to this blog post or fill out the contact form at BVSoftware.com.

Are you marketing to a receptive audience? If not, you're missing out on one of the greatest ways to increase your conversion rates.

I recently returned from our annual company retreat. On the Jet Blue flight down the flight attendant passed out toothpaste samples to the entire plane. If you can get past the irony of handing out toothpaste that you can't take through the security checkout anymore it was a really good promotion opportunity for the toothpaste company.

Beverage service was started with the snack basket. Everyone likes getting something from the "free" goodies basket which was quickly followed up with drink orders. Lastly the attendant walked down the isle and handed everyone an unexpected sample tube of toothpaste. It felt like a great little extra that no one was expecting.

What would have happened if the flight attendant had instead started with the toothpaste samples? People would wonder why they're getting this. Some might complain "Where's my snack? Where's my drink." When you put the customers in a receptive mood by offering expected drinks and snacks they're already used to getting something as the attendant comes down the isle. If the toothpaste company had setup a booth in the airport terminal do you think they'd have close a 100% acceptance rate from everyone walking by? Hardly!

You can do the same with your web store. Market to the customers who have already purchased something. They're telling you that they like your store and your products. What else can you offer while they're expecting your delivery. Put something unexpected in the box that they didn't order. Do you think that receiving an unexpected free goodie might get your customer to tell a few friends about your store? What would that be worth to you?