Mashery

Traction in the enterprise software space can be summed up (in a somewhat oversimplified fashion) by determining how many people are actually using your product. Net new sales is not an accurate barometer due to the potential shelf ware component for enterprise software. Like it or not folks, some of our stuff is bought and never used, sad but true.

So, other than surveys from those industry analyst types. How do we determine traction beyond just looking at sales numbers? A non-comprehensive approach to determining traction could be to look at these three factors:

1) Maintenance revenue. Yes, I just said don’t look at sales, but maintenance revenue is different, if customers are paying maintenance then they are actually using the product,

2) Public case studies, press mentions and the like. If a company is willing to talk publicly about what they are doing or, say, be mentioned in a blog, that’s a pretty good indication of use,

and the one I’d like to highlight here,

3) New product features derived from customer requests and requirements. This is the best one in my opinion, as this not only implies use, but adds current and active use today within the infrastructure of the enterprise. The company is using and thinking about your product and wants improvements done to it so that they can use it more. That, to me, is a great traction indicator.

We here at Mashery take our customer requests and requirements very seriously. The information we glean from customers “out in the field” is invaluable. We, like other startups, can whiteboard and attempt to predict the next great feature on our own. But, our customers (and yours, btw) will tell you if you let them. In the spirit of listening to our customers, I’d like to highlight some of the recent features we released in September. All of these were in some part developed as a result of direct customer contact.

We like to call this release of Mashery, SOAR (SAML, OAuth, Reporting). It’s catchy, it shows progress and traction. Plus, it’s a really great visual and marketing loves acronyms. The details:

· Support for SAML implementations.
· Support for OAuth
· Reporting 2.0 which includes:
- Providing trend data
- Detailed statistics by developer
- Performance management information
- Method level activity

We have a few customers that are already using these new features, including Netflix. Netflix is our first OAuth customer. Netflix and Mashery have combined to produce the Netflix API and the Netflix Developer Network.

The Netflix API and the Netflix Developer Network:

· Netflix provides more than 8 million subscribers access to more than 100,000 DVD titles plus a growing library of more than 12,000 choices that can be watched instantly on their PCs.
· The Netflix API allows access to data for all of those titles as well as access on a user’s behalf to manage their movie queue. The Netflix API is free and allows commercial use.

One last traction indicator – developers using the product to do new and cool things. Two implementations have already been produced using the Netflix API:

1) Pyxis Mobile has released the SmartFlicks, Netflix on BlackBerry application. SmarFlicks lets BlackBerry users manage their Netflix account and read movie reviews and news from their mobile device.

2) For the iPhone, check out what Adrian Cockcroft is doing to make OAuth work on his iPhone.