Dennis discusses four challenges of succeeding at enterprise scale, how he has overcome them in the past, and how he expects to continue to overcome them at Ensure.
In this 11 minute segment (download iPod compatible, 56MB), Dennis Blanchette describes what it is like to grow an IT company so that it is able to succeed at enterprise scale. He compares his current company, Ensure Technologies, with another where he was at the helm, Wise Solutions. As Dennis has mentioned in a previous segment regarding Ensure, he also learned from his customers at Wise. Specifically, customers were using Wise's single user technology to help manage their enterprise. With properly focused development, Dennis was able to move customers from this $300 product to an enterprise product that cost $10,000 and worked at a much larger scale.
Dennis perceives similar opportunities for Ensure, but cracking the enterprise market is hard. There are four challenges:
- Scaling your own processes: Generally, larger scale leads to more manufacturing efficiencies. However, internal processes generally have to be reworked to handle the higher volumes, and the supply chain must also be optimized.
- Handling customer workflow: Does your product add an efficiency to the customer or a roadblock? In the case of Ensure's 'Xyloc product, an efficiency is added by removing the need to manually secure computers.
- Scaling deployment: Enterprise customers may require an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude the level of deployment required for single user customers or very small businesses.
- Regulatory compliance: Many large corporations live in a thicket of regulations. Your product must be in compliance with those regulations.