Is Your Organization on a Burning Platform?

Presumably your Association Management Software comes with an app or two.

Does your AMS platform company also make smartphones?

Microsoft, the same company that makes SharePoint, has just acquired Nokia’s Devices & Services business. Nokia used to be the undisputed global cell phone market king. Nokia completely missed the smartphone boat and so did Microsoft. While Nokia continues to make some of the world’s best engineered and high-quality phones, they presently have little market share. That is slowly changing, but it will be a while before Nokia is the household name it once was.

Losing something you once had is arguably worse than never having it at all.

Right now, AMS vendors are being gobbled up by larger companies with very different agendas. Organizations that depend on these AMS systems to run their day-to-day operations are not exactly in an enviable position.

These organizations are losing something they once had – it’s gone, they just don’t know it yet. They are in essence standing on a burning platform (that one’s for you Mr. Elop).

Does platform longevity matter? That was a rhetorical question, and of course it does. It is easily the most important factor in determining a new solution. If your platform goes away – well, it’s a tough day at the office to say the least.

The Microsoft SharePoint platform has a very long and highly successful history and a rock solid (not to mention exciting) future.

Our Association Management Ecosystem™ customers have something very special. They have an extremely powerful platform, with tens of thousands of companies making platform specific apps every day. They have the unique ability to leverage a unified platform approach (i.e. SharePoint = highly collaborative intranet, extranet, websites) AND the ability to enjoy a best-of-breed approach (i.e. hooks with MailChimp, PayPal, Authorize.NET, Amazon, Stripe, Avalara, ERP’s, CRM’s, accounting systems, virtually any modern system or service).

The best way to determine the strength or potential longevity of a platform is to determine the size of the platforms overall ecosystem.

• Ecosystems cannot be forced, they happen organically around good ideas.
• How many books are on Amazon about _____?
• How many different LinkedIn groups exist about _____?
• How many local user groups about _____?
• How many partner companies?
• How many conferences per year about _____?

…and some completely unfair questions to consider – which may be unfair, but our customers enjoy them none the less:

• Does the platform ship with a $3.x billion dollar Search Engine?
• Can you operate the platform on-premise OR in the “cloud”.
• Speaking of “cloud”, does the manufacture own and operate the largest cloud on the planet?
• Can your organization become self-sufficient on the platform, or is custom development required for practically everything?
• And last, but not least: Does your AMS platform company also make smartphones?