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Consumer space keeps tools in beta and still does business
By Saheer Karimbayil
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Saturday, 17 January 2009, 02:14 IST
Bangalore: "One of the few segments where products in beta stage can do business in a massive scale is consumer space. While enterprise market demands a wider product life-cycle, hence needs a big outlay, doing business in the consumer space is cost-effective and a wide customer base is out there in that segment," says Jay Pullur, CEO, Pramati, while speaking on 'Shift From Enterprise to Consumer Market, Opportunities Challenges and Experiences' at HeadStart and Compute 2009 held in Bangalore. In short, one can use tools which are in beta stage and still do business in consumer space, instead of waiting till the full development phases are over.
For some months, the country has been witnessing some products basically addressing the consumer market adding some more features to barge into enterprise market as iPhone did by adding corporate mailing system onto it. But the trend is just reversing now due to tight strung purses.
It was the recession coupled with intense competition and the scarcity of adequate funds that prompted many companies to shift their focus from enterprise segment to consumer space. One has to be very cautious while tapping opportunities in consumer space. Adding more features does not make any sense here as a company's ultimate aim is to make customer at least try the products that are on sale.
The latest revelation by a study is that the consumer space has a lot in store for cloud computing too, which is an emerging topic in the enterprise computing space as well. As the concept of cloud computing gets more and more attention in the enterprise information technology space, it is already making serious inroads in the consumer space, reports Sys-Con Media.
Around 69 percent of online Americans use Web mail services, store data online, or use software programs such as word processing applications whose functionality is located on the Web, say researchers at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. They are, in other words, already users of cloud computing. It seems that beta products will surely work there too.
