How to fail in business

Network management company successes and failures

Industry analysis by Beth Schultz, plus the latest news headlines.

Editor's Note: Starting next week, the Network/Systems Management newsletter will have a new author: Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie. As Network World's network/systems management expert, Denise will bring to the newsletter a wealth of knowledge about network, systems and applications management issues. We thank you for reading this newsletter!

After returning from a very nice, long holiday season, it occurred to me that I had more office cleaning to do, which inevitably means revisiting files that haven’t been accessed recently (electronic and otherwise). Among these were many companies no longer active in the market. And so it occurred to me that while there are a lot of pointers I might give management vendors on how to succeed, there are at least just as many I could share on how to fail. For you in IT, if you see these signs cropping up among provider/ suppliers – you can consider the following points a litmus test to help you separate the alkalinity of peace of mind from the acidity of concern.

I selected 12 companies to brood over (time of year I guess), seven of which have disappeared. They span the fields of network management, application management, broad systems and network management, security, and services plus tools. The companies that remain appear to be hanging on, or have morphed into a new business, or collapsed into a core business outside this market. As taken from this list, here are a few pointers on how to fail:

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Editor's Note: Starting next week, the Network/Systems Management newsletter will have a new author: Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie. As Network World's network/systems management expert, Denise will bring to the newsletter a wealth of knowledge about network, systems and applications management issues. We thank you for reading this newsletter!

After returning from a very nice, long holiday season, it occurred to me that I had more office cleaning to do, which inevitably means revisiting files that haven’t been accessed recently (electronic and otherwise). Among these were many companies no longer active in the market. And so it occurred to me that while there are a lot of pointers I might give management vendors on how to succeed, there are at least just as many I could share on how to fail. For you in IT, if you see these signs cropping up among provider/ suppliers – you can consider the following points a litmus test to help you separate the alkalinity of peace of mind from the acidity of concern.

I selected 12 companies to brood over (time of year I guess), seven of which have disappeared. They span the fields of network management, application management, broad systems and network management, security, and services plus tools. The companies that remain appear to be hanging on, or have morphed into a new business, or collapsed into a core business outside this market. As taken from this list, here are a few pointers on how to fail:

* Grand vision/ small company: OK, I am all for vision and sad to say there’s generally not enough high quality vision in our market or in any segment of the economy – or anywhere else for that matter. But while having a grand vision can be a good place to start even if the company is small, execution demands care and focus. A building plan should be in place vs. relying on the engineering, intellect, aesthetic, and the excellence of the program to carry the day. In our market, at least, where deployment stakes and time to value count a lot, big visions with little underneath will very quickly fail.

* Too much product complexity: Product complexity leads to long deployments and to stretched company resources. Not all “big visions” demand product complexity – and sometimes rather small, banal visions have generated huge product complexity - so these two items are really separate. You in IT have already been stung (time and again) by too much product complexity, and are rightly ready to rebel. So this is another sure way to fail.

* Hesitation to go forward and execute: While I have seen an opposite problem at some companies (first hand) with that also fatal sequence - “fire, ready, aim” - some of the companies I looked at had sat on seemingly philosophical dilemmas that froze action way too long. If you in IT keep finding that the vendor consistently answers tangible requests with lengthy philosophical digressions it’s definitely time to switch horses.

* Deflating to a niche: While big visions from small companies can lead to failures, some of the companies here made a mid-course correction to go, so to speak, from the sublime to the ridiculous - from selling versatile, flexible solutions to a tool that answered a value prop so tiny that it actually took more time to explain than the bigger vision. Customers like you went from cautious interest to a “who cares?” or worse “are you crazy?” pretty much overnight.

Schultz is a longtime IT journalist. You can email her or find her here.