I have been meaning to write about Thingamy for some time now, but having spent a week in South Africa, in Johannesburg, I have had other things on my mind. Johannesburg was interesting, if rather rainy. Having said that, there is nothing quite like being in a tropical rainstorm to remind you of what real weather is. Driving to the airport with one side of the sky bright sunshine, with the other steel grey and pouring down rain, was a visual treat.
Various comments on Hugh’s blog, and elsewhere have asked the question is Thingamy an SAP killer? The answer to that is a reasonably unequivocal “no”. However, that doesn't stop it being an interesting tool, with a strong concept behind it.
One way to look at the potential for Thingamy would be to use Kotlers four P's - Price, Place, Product and Promotion, as the basis for an analysis. Potentially the most interesting one to start with is product.
Product: Thingamy is an interesting combination of middleware and data processing software, with a strong innovative ability to use user-defined tags as the basis for all process handling. I have written extensively about what I feel the requirements are for a middleware and process solutions here. Thingamy does a good job of handling most of these requirements, and does a very elegant way. There are tools which have some equivalent functions are available on the IT market, including one of my personal favourites Microgen Aptitude. While the system does not have Thingamy emphasis on the ultra flexible data model, as it does not have its own data storage, it does have very strong graphically driven process control tools.
In both tools, what I see, mainly from experience using Aptitude, is that their flexibility is both their strength and their weakness. One thing that you would not do, is take Thingamy or Aptitude, and try and run a business with it without a setup phase. The technical implementation of the product, especially Thingamy, seems to be relatively trivial, but that is not what I am thinking about.
What is not in place, at the beginning of the process, is the business model, the process definitions, and an introductory data structure. Sig is very clear that the imposition of an external model is not the objective of Thingamy, and I understand and agree with that point of view. However, building a coherent data and process model is not a trivial exercise, and takes a certain mindset to be able to do it successfully. For example, how many times have people in operations just about lost their temper, when asked for apparently meaningless and difficult to obtain information by some bean counter who works in headquarters. Only, it turns out that the information they are requesting is necessary for mundane things like revenue recognition, meeting external regulation like Sarbanes Oxley, and so on.
For this reason, if no other, I would say that Thingamy is not an SAP killer. However, if you're looking at a business in which there is no existing expertise, no existing data model, and no real knowledge about make the processes work, then there is a very clear application. In other words, for my mind, Thingamy is the ultimate start-up machine.
So, in summary Thingamy is a very good toolset, but it does not contain default processes and data models, and instead relies upon the user to create them. Indeed, as I have already said, Sig would say that that was the strength of the software.
Place: the toolset has applications in areas, which are not already served by software that can give support for commodity processes; of which SAP would be one good example. This to me implies small and unusual businesses, organisations that have unique business processes, whatever their size, or as a test bed for experimental business modelling. The other thing about place, is that it would require a person with a certain intelligence and insight to apply the tool in a useful way. Give this to an idiot, and they will tie themselves up in knots so fast it defies belief. That is not a criticism of Thingamy, more a reflection of people's ability to think straight. It also tends to reinforce the idea of giving it to smart small organisations, e.g. start ups and boutique operations, with the understanding that if they get big, it can scale.
Promotion: Hugh and Sig are obviously getting ready to promote Thingamy via blogging and the Web. Getting people to play with the application will be easy, and getting a positive buzz around it should also be well within the realms of the possible. However, how do you get people committed to using and implementing Thingamy in real life situations? I see two clear cases, one where the user is going to install it in their own business, and that is a straightforward outcome. The second is where there is a consultant or someone with an area of expertise, who is poorly supplied by standard applications either in terms of availability, quality, or price. There is an opportunity for them to build a standard configuration within Thingamy, and then pass this on as an extensible business tool to the community, which they serve. Either way, word of mouth, reputation, and all of the good inputs that blogging is capable of generating seem an obvious way to go.
Price: this is really to me the most interesting part of the discussion. There are three clear licensing models that can be applied in this case; classic software pricing, with an acquisition cost, perhaps an annual maintenance fee, and maybe some sort of support cost for installation and training. Another alternative would be to release Thingamy under a GPL license, in other words make it open source software, and make the money up on support, or just live on the Whuffie. The third alternative is to sell licences for Thingamy as an engine, which is then customised and configured by various consultancies, software houses and other users, who then sell on an added value packaged or reconfigured version of the software.
As I understand it, the software was developed on a cash basis, and therefore Sig, who is a smart businessman, has considerable room for manoeuvre on the these pricing and licensing models. I will be interested to see what he comes up with.
One thing for sure, if I get my hands on a copy of Thingamy, I'll certainly be having a play with it, and thinking about what can be done with it. Watch this space.
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