The marketplace for new buyers

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Born and raised in Amsterdam, I frequently visited markets. There are some very traditional markets like Albert Cuyp, were the local slang and dialect was and is very typical. In the early days my mother took me there to buy clothes, shoes etc. Later, when I was a student, to buy some cheap food (at the end of the day) and also to experience the foreign flavours of food.

In my time in the South of France we spent some wonderful moments in Sommières where the market on Saturday mornings were a feast to get your hands on local fresh food which you could bring to the terraces surrounding the marketplace. BYOF (Bring Your Own Food). Of course you were suppose to buy some wine from the bar, but that was not exactly a terrible thing to do either…

I always see those markets as something with an ancient history, like 500 odd years ago it was the opportunity to buy and sell stuff and even ‘shop’ for a partner and other social activities. In the rural area where I live in the Netherlands, markets and fairs still breath the atmosphere of social get togethers.

Today, the world is different, and yet we see marketplaces on the internet. Very popular ones like eBay or, in The Netherlands, Marktplaats, which is the true translation of market place and in France, leboncoin.fr.
It never fails to surprise me with the quantity and origin of the stuff you can buy/sell there. Although there is no atmosphere like on the Albert Cuyp or in Sommières, it proves to be very successful.

Last week, my Dutch colleague Rob Pennock gave me a very impressive demonstration of IBM’s Marketplace. Not yet available in Europe, like in the US, but coming soon. What was surprising to me was its very interesting and fresh user interface. Although IBM has a special division to help clients to make their website and Mobile apps more interactive, I always have the impression that IBM is not eating his own dog food when it comes to spiffy looking websites. But this one is, based on the new IBM Design methodology.

The whole idea of the IBM Marketplace is that customers can easily visit the site and be addressed from the business function they represent, e.g the “new buyers”. If you are a Chief Marketing Officer, and you are looking for an Industry specific Marketing solution, you can learn, explore, try (and even buy, hehe) IBM solutions for your specific business need without reading one IT specific word.
There is no talk about Virtual Machines, Secure Network Connectivity, Database tables etc. No, there is business talk. Likewise for the HR function: We show the HR solutions we have addressing them by business needs, not by IT integration capabilities.

The idea is that you, as a customer, can inform yourself on IBM’s possibilities. With just one click away you can also try the solution. And since most offers are running in a cloud-based environment, they can be ignited easily and without any hassle. The business user itself can do that. And if this potential customer really insists, the offering can be bought as well 🙂 Also by clicking the button.

Rob demoed a more IT related topic, IT Service Management. He has a virtual server running, went to the marketplace and clicked the TRY button. Some code was downloaded on the virtual machine, executed and 5 mins later this server popped up in the IT management console showing it’s CPU load, free disk space and some other metrics. I was amazed with the ease this was working. Of course, you can fine tune the thresholds add or remove metrics but out of the box (with the best practices of IBM) you can have an IT Management environment without leaving your chair.

Everybody has access to the IBM Marketplace. The only thing you have to do is get an IBM ID for free and then you can experience the new way of doing business. Sure, if you want, you can call in an IBM-er to fine tune, talk, present the details of the solution, but you do not have to…

It fits neatly into the self-service economy of today. Like Rob also described to me: whenever he (or you or myself) are in need of a new home appliance (as an example) we are going to inform ourselves on the web first. Then perhaps buy it in a store or online (more likely) I never go into a shop for information anymore (apart from my good old high-end audio store) as I found out that they don’t know and they are consulting internet as well.

Not all the ten thousands products of IBM are available through a couple of clicks yet, but I think it will change the way IBM is going to do business.

Interesting, isn’t it?