Trends Report

Five Steps To Selecting A Software Platform For Business Applications

How ISVs Should Take Customer Perception Of Mainstream Platforms Into Account

May 18th, 2010
Stefan Ried, Ph.D., null
Stefan Ried, Ph.D.
With contributors:
Thomas Mendel, Ph.D. , Miroslaw Lisserman

Summary

Independent software vendors (ISVs) that create business applications today rely on many existing software components to speed up their time-to-market. While many applications became agnostic to the underlying operating system, the selection of an SQL database, programming language, or a more comprehensive business process platform is not just a technical question. ISVs will sell their product more successfully if their platform selection meets what the potential buyer segment considers to be a mainstream platform for a certain purpose and customer segment. Forrester leverages its business survey data to explore which customer segments use what platforms. Vendor strategy professionals should add this customer perception to the technical selection criteria of software platforms underneath new software products.

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