Photo by Seth Kane on Unsplash

In my history as a Sales Engineer I’ve helped promote nearly 2 dozen different on-prem or SaaS software “solutions”.  When I started at Compuware, for example, we had 7 distinct offerings.  They were integrated, but the Account Executives had a lot to offer to help solve problems.  The later firms all had different add-ons or features you could pay extra for.  This has lead to hundreds, if not thousands, of discovery calls and discussions.  During those meetings firms would describe the problem they were trying to solve as well as the constraints they were working in.  For larger firms those constraints surprised me at times as to how they hampered these firm’s ability to be competitive.  If your firm has a policy like I am about to outline you need to have discussions internally and see if it can be modified to no longer be so absolute.  Your revenue, shareholders and job depends on it!

That policy is one of “no Single Vendors” for Application Delivery Chain components.  There are reasons to argue for having multiple vendors.  They include:

• No lock-in for price and negotiating.  When you have a company that you “can’t live without” there is a perception that they can raise prices or have their QoS drop and you are stuck.
• It can make scaling easier as you can build your architecture in such a way it is agnostic to the provider of that component.
• It can be protection against system failure or performance degradation.  One vendor starts to have problems?  Turn the dial and leverage the other(s) for more of the traffic.

The Serious Trade-off

But here is the rub – what if that single vendor gave you an extremely competitive edge?  I’ve worked for companies that were leveraged like that.  We had clients that made it clear we were never to speak of them being customers.  They knew that the component we provided gave them a strategic edge in their space.  Startups are more open to leveraging these sorts of technologies.  They are willing to take more perceived “risk” and utilize features that other larger firms might shy away from.  And if the firm they depend on folds or has it’s QoS drop?  They have a contingency plan in place and are nimble enough to adapt and overcome.

I remember visiting an Enterprise sized firm and having an initial discussion with their VP.  For the demo he said “Only cover mainstream features.  If it is a feature unique to you we won’t be allowed to utilize it.”   Their “No Single Vendor” policy prevented them from leveraging ANY differentiation in the vendors they leveraged.

We had one customer that was leveraging one of these features to reduce their peak CPU load by 80%.  Imagine offering a more secure web property that is faster.  That allows you to turn off more than half of the servers in your data center . . . or expand into other offerings and leverage the idle equipment for the new ventures.  That is a lot of saved fixed costs.  Especially since your other costs are now purely variable.  These allow you to plan your budgets better.  When business is down, costs are down proportionally.

Why You Can Trust The Single Vendor

In the end, those singe vendors still have a market to satisfy.  They know they can’t raise prices too high because they need their customers to do well and thrive.  The reality is that they need to compete on their basic features too and have to be cost effective.  You also will find that most price based on consumption.  With this comes discounts for higher volumes.  Those discounts can be substantial!

The Startups are often more aware of new features and technology.  They are better able to leverage those features to orchestrate a better offering in their market.  It will either be lower cost for them, or better performance.  Often it is both.  And this is because they are not bogged down with dated policies like what I’ve outlined.

What are some of the unique firms and features you’ve used to differentiate your solution?  Or are you stuck in a bygone era?