Have you ever eaten Scrapple? It’s gastronomically ghoulish, made up of pig or hog offal (liver, heart, head, and anything else left over) that’s smashed into a mushy paste, sliced and then fried on a grill slathered in fat.

I know, I know, you’re wondering  what could possibly make something that good tasting that’s also good for you be any less desirable?

The answer is:  Hoovers.

I was doing research the other day on Jones Dairy Farm and banged into the Hoovers profile for the company. You can read the public profile here. In that profile, Hoovers says that

The links on this company’s Web site are of the edible variety. Jones Dairy Farm produces sausage, bacon, ham, and more…In 1981 Jones Dairy Farm acquired Ralph and Paul Adams, Inc., which markets Rape Scrapple.”

Rape Scrapple?

Now some of you may know that I’m a mostly vegetarian, except for one day a year when I gorge on Hot Pastrami at Katz’s Delicatessen in NYC for my birthday, and maybe the occasional classic hot dog from a classic hot dog stand I may come across in my travels. But before I met my wife and became a vegetarian, I’d never met an animal I wouldn’t happily eat. So my vestigial meat-eater’s senses perked up when I read “Rape Scrapple.”

I had to know what tasty extras they put into ordinary Scrapple to make it into Rape Scrapple.

Alas, the truth is that the only way to make  Rape Scrapple is through typographic error.

It turns out that Ralph and Paul Adams, Inc. make Rapa Scrapple, not Rape Scrapple, and have since 1926. In fact, according to their website, they are the largest producer of Scrapple in the world. The name Rapa comes from taking a little bit from Ralph and a little bit from Paul and mixing them together, in not too dissimilar a way from the way they make the Scrapple portion of Rapa Scrapple.

Searching on Google turns up numerous repetitions of the Hoover’s Rape Scrapple error, passed blithely along to unsuspecting searchers by Answers.com, numerous contacts on DemandBase.com, AAAA’s Smartbrief, and of course, the ever popular but highly dangerous varta.rr.nu/germany-dialing/xionghim (NOTE: Don’t check this out: it’s a reported attack site!!!)

I think it’s safe to assume Hoovers made the first typo, and it was simply picked up by other companies that reference or license the Hoover’s information, since the Hoovers free profile says:

“Produced by Hoover’s in-house editorial team, the Company Description tracks ownership transitions, company progress via mergers and acquisitions, major growth milestones, and strategic initiatives, to provide a holistic view of Jones Dairy Farm’s evolution in the marketplace.”

Clearly Rape Scrapple is just a typo. Somebody inadvertently changed an “a” to an “e.”

So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that Hoovers is a D&B company, and their stock in trade is corporate research. Hoovers made the mistake, and then they failed to catch it, and  it got picked up and repeated across the Internet (where it will most likely stay forever) by people who have reason to trust Hoovers to get it right.

Now I’m not suggesting that some potential investor or business person doing their due diligence will choose not to invest in or do business with Jones Dairy Farm because they make Rape Scrapple.

But can someone please explain to me why, if Hoovers can’t catch a simple error like this, we should trust them to get the financials correct? Or the media spend?  Or the annual sales?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to microwave a Morningstar Farms Vegetarian Sausage Patty and pretend it’s Scrapple. It’s not the same, but then again, maybe that’s a good thing.

In a recent LinkedIn question a Director of Recruiting asked what is better, Hoovers or ZoomInfo?  I was surprised to NOT see Jigsaw, but after reading the answers to this question I was happy to see that numerous recruiting colleagues had suggest Jigsaw as the best solution.  For a minute I thought I was missing something.  To be sure, all three are great resources.  But, to those considering purchasing one of these tools I offer the following advice.

All three (Hoovers, ZoomInfo, and Jigsaw) have a trial period, so I recommend you use the trial period for all three at the same time (even though this is a lot of work ), because it puts you in a position to truly compare apples to apples.  I have done this twice in the past five years and each time found Jigsaw gives me more accurate data for what I seek (and at a lower cost!).

I also think it is important to understand how each of them collect data, as this drives the value add that each of them offer.  As I understand it Jigsaw’s data is input by members themselves (not Jigsaw employees).  There is motivation on the part of the member to keep the information accurate because they get points when they input the data and when others download the data, which can help the member reduce or eliminate the need to pay for a membership.  There are also penalties, in the form of lost points, for those who don’t keep their data up to date and/or try to input inaccurate data.  This is a huge plus in my mind.  Jigsaw’s biggest downfall in my opinion is its industry classification (Hoovers is way better) and the fact that not all the members who input data accurately categorize a company.  For instance, I find companies listed as Software & Internet when they are Business Services or as having $50M in revenue when they actually have $5M.

I consider ZoomInfo #2 in these choices and their method of data collection is quite different.  As I understand it they use a web crawler type technology to search the web to identify titles, names, emails, phone, company, etc. and some type of cross referencing system that helps them pull together job history, etc.  The downfall here is that they only capture what is already on the web, and even Google only indexes about 5% of all web pages.  If the person you are looking for is not mentioned in some way on a web page ZoomInfo will not find them.  That said, because the web is updated so often I have found their data to be surprising more accurate than Hoovers.

If you want a serious web indexing system try Broadlook (http://www.broadlook.com).  Fare warning, this tool is meant for real researchers!  I would not recommend it to everyday sales people or recruiters.

Lastly, there is Hoovers.  As I understand it Hoovers derives most of its data from D&B’s many business databases, which I believe are derived from various publications, surveys, industry groups, etc.  While Hoovers provides a large amount of useful information (financial, comptetition, industry and sub-industry) it is really only good for large and/or public companies.  Many smaller companies don’t even make it in their database, and because of its data collection method some data is really old.

The last thing I’ll say about Jigsaw is you can sign up for a month to month and cancel at any time if you don’t get value from it.  Last I checked, both Hoovers and ZoomInfo were charging between 5-7k for an annual membership.  This fact alone should steer you to Jigsaw (at least initially) because you can sign up for as little as $25 a month and see if you like it.  If you don’t then you go try something else.

I’d really like to hear what other people have to say on this.  Feel free to post a comment or email me at cordell DOT larkin AT cordellandcompany DOT com.  For more about me see my LinkedIn Profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/cordelllarkin, and to follow me on twitter visit http://twitter.com/cordellco.

Crawford. Hoover’s. Chicken fried chicken. Regret. Pie. Barfly’s. Lone Star. Lang. Mrs. Johnson’s. Kolache. Epic. Love.

Business Sprouts recommends  Hoovers.com, as the best place to start with Lead Generation. I am sure that most of you savvy sales people are aware of Hoovers.com. If you are not, let’s start sprouting some leads.  Learn C-level names and quick overviews of the biggest companies.

There is free trail session, but without it you can already search a handful of companies.  If you don’t have a subscriptions, they will lock some companies info.

If your job is to do lead generations for the sales department, and your company is currently not using it, you should try to convince them, it will take a lot of time off your initial research and more time dialing. Well, if you can not pursue your boss, no worry, use Hoovers anyways for the companies you can.

(Business Sprouts)

How many of us would go on a road trip without first determining the optimal route to our destination?  Or locating the lodging facilities, restaurants, and service stations along the way?  Yet, why is it that when it comes to running our business, many of us don’t take the time to research the route to our business’ success?

Marketing research is a key component in developing effective marketing and business plans.  Marketing research helps us understand who our customers are, what their needs and wants are, and how they perceive our companies and our products vis a vis our compeition; marketing research also helps us ascertain how viable the market is for our products and services, the degree of competition, and the trends within our industry; and marketing research helps us establish goals and choose courses of action.

Yet many small business avoid doing any marketing research because they perceive it to be very costly.  However marketing research exists in several forms, many low cost or even free.  There are two types of marketing research data: primary and secondary.  Primary research is information you collect directly from the customer through surveys or focus groups.  Secondary research is information that has been collected and published by various organizations such as government agencies, trade publications and associations, and chambers of commerce, for various purposes.   Secondary research tends to be the least costly of the two, so it will account for the vast majority of market research a small business conducts, and most often will be all it needs.

Doing Marketing Research on a Shoestring

How can a business do marketing research on a low budget?  There are lots of great secondary research sources available, often for the nominal cost of a trip to your local library or an Internet search.  One of the best sources of marketing research data is the U.S. Census.  The Census Bureau provides demographics and population estimates, as well as social, political, and economic data.  The Census Bureau also conducts an Economic Census every five years to measure industrial activity.  The Economic Census breaks statistics down by industry and region, enabling you to size up your competition.  You can find out how many firms are in your territory, how big they are, what their revenues are, etc.  You can even find out how much of the industry’s sales are controlled by the top companies.

Besides the Census Bureau, you can find inexpensive data from your chamber of commerce, your trade associations, your vendors, and even your customers.  Check out the Encyclopedia of Associations, by Gale Research, at your library.  This source can help you identify associations relevant to your industry, as well as associations your customers might be members of.

Your public library will also have sources like The Thomas Register of American Manufacturers and the Harris InfoSource All-Industries and Manufacturing Directories, which can help you target businesses in a certain industry, learn more about competitors, and find companies to manufacture your products.

If you’re looking for company-specific information, your library may have an online subscription to Hoover’s, which is owned by Dun and Bradstreet.  In fact, D&B also furnishes its Million Dollar Database, which provides addresses, key officers, sales, and number of employees for almost 2 million U.S. and Canadian organizations, both publicly traded and privately owned.

Secondary information can also be obtained from colleges and universities, community organizations, and other government agencies.

And this list is far from comprehensive.

Given all the secondary information at our fingertips, the question is no longer whether small businesses can afford to do marketing research, but whether they can afford not to.

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I think it’s fair to say that when I first started at Hoover’s I had a little difficulty adjusting to an office gig. Which is remarkable, considering just how laid-back the organization and culture is at the office. Consider – in the four or so years I’ve been there I’ve worn slacks into the office twice and I think I’ve only tucked in my shirt a few more times than that.

Still, going from bartender and freelance writer to sitting at a cube and interacting professionally with people every Monday through Friday was a challenge.

In the years that have passed (although it’s infinitely more difficult without an oak bar between me and them) I’ve slowly gotten better at that interaction. My language is sometimes inexcusably inappropriate, but, luckily, they cut me some slack knowing that I’m working on it.

In any case, in all that time, it’s always been fairly clear to me that everyone at Hoover’s takes treating the customer right pretty seriously. It’s one of the things that makes working there something I can (genuinely) be proud of. And, because the economy is what it is, it’s something all of us have been keenfully aware just how important it is to keep doing well. 

Which is why I’m so irritated about a personal situation, I felt the need to tell you about it.  

The short version is this: the contract for our pest service was up as of April and Sarah and I have been checking out options for a new vendor. Last Thursday, or old vendor came out during the day, treated our home (we have a system that allows them to do everything from outside) then left an invoice for about 30% higher than we paid before.

This is after we cancelled our service with them in April.

So I’ve spent the last few days, original contract in hand, arguing with their office. And I’m not trying to get over – it was time for a treatment, and even though we’d cancelled our service with them we haven’t yet found a replacement; so I’m happy to pay for the services we received. Just not at a 30% mark-up. And still they argue.

Sarah and I, in our original contract, decided to pay for the entire year of service up front. So I ask you – isn’t that the kind of customer you want to not only keep, but also take care of? These guys seem to want to demonstrate some shady practices and then hope their customer will simply fold.

Sorry, not gonna happen.

A friend has written about this kind of thing before, see here, but now I’ll ask you: in an environment where every interaction counts, what are you doing to take care of and keep your customers? Given my recent experience, I’d love to hear some good examples…

image by yummiec00kies

A wonderful, sassy designer I work with here at Hoover’s named Sarah (you can find her site by clicking on the “What’s on my mind” link in the Blogroll to the right) sent me a link to an ad she thought I might like a while back. I certainly did, and thought about it over the weekend. Given the constant, mind-numbing bad news we hear every time we turn the dial or watch the news, I thought you might enjoy the following:

You can find the actual ad here or the overall site, Ads of the World, here. There’s some really funny stuff if you have the time.

We hit two distinctive looking alleyways in central Bournemouth; serving  as great locations for our shoot. The sun was shinning but that really didn’t matter since we were purely after the dark and moody look of the alley.

I used the Canon 50mm f/1.8 for most portraits and the Sigma 17-70mm for all wide shots. We also used the vivi 285hv for some off-camera flash.

The shoot turned out really well and I have to say that Vianna’s a GREAT model! There was hardly any direction from me. I only had to capture her natural expression and the job was done

After shooting most portraits in the first alleyway we moved to the second – more secluded – alley. There we found rubbish, wooden frames, clothes, sofas, frying pans, hoovers – everything you might need in case you had no place to live. We used almost everything we could find as props and it definitely worked out!

Vianna was kind enough to sit on a bin and stand on a very narrow pole (that shot didn’t work btw ), adding to the composition of the shots.

Alex did a great job helping out, especially finding weird stuff to use as props!

Click here to see the shots!

Fuad El-Hibri on Hoovers

Fuad El-Hibri  • Chairman • Emergent Biodefense Operations Lansing Inc • Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers

Title: Chairman

Department: Executives

Industry: Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers

Company: Emergent Biodefense Operations Lansing Inc

Address:  3500 N Martin Luther King, Lansing, MI 48906

Phone Number: 517-327-1500

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

If you any doubts about how the mainstream media is playing us, then here’s the proof that they indeed are.  It’s easy to see when you take a look at Hulu. Most of the uniformed world think FOX (News Corp.) and NBC/GE are “enemies”  but we see that they’re working together to suck the air out of independent media content available on the web.

Hulu–”An evil plot to destroy the world.”  I didn’t originate this description; Hulu did. It’s in their ad which features the obnoxious Denis Leary jabbering away about TV content turning your mind to mush and snarking at a “brain dead” (those are the ad’s words) geek who’s getting a stream of green stuff passed into his ear.  Before he’s through, Leary says that the folks at Hulu are  “aliens” and then winds up with the tag line, “Hulu…an evil plot to destroy the world…Enjoy.”

The ad is up at the company blog under the title “The Evil Plot Continues.”  Go see for yourself…(and be sure to “click” to see the full ad after the initial clip is over or click here for the video without the blog post.).  This week, Hulu has released a “Video Panel widget”:

To continue to deliver on our mission to connect audiences with their favorite content wherever they are — or, as Denis Leary would say, on their “bliggety blogs, facey spaces and tweety pages” — we are releasing a new embeddable product this week: the Video Panel widget.

The ad is supposed to be a cool joke aimed at the younger crowd, but in reality, it may not just a joke!  A couple of weeks ago I happened to be watching CNBC and caught an interview with the young CEO who was talking about how successful Hulu had become and how it would be even more successful as it closes in on YouTube, which is currently the top video site.

And who’s behind Hulu?  According to Hoovers (with my bolding):

Hulu Company Description

When the rich and famous name their offspring, anything is possible. NBC and FOX had a digital baby. And they called it Hulu. Initially formed as a joint venture between NBC Universal (a unit of GE) and News Corp. (the parent of FOX), Hulu.com is a video site that features video from more than 100 content providers. Offerings include TV shows from FOX and NBC, as well as from subsidiary cable channels such as Bravo and the SCI FI Channel. Hulu also shows films from studios including Sony and MGM. Content — all total, some 900 TV series and full-length movies– is streamed on demand, free of charge the day after its broadcast debut. After a nearly five-month long beta version, Hulu.com was launched in 2008.

And, there’s another player now: Disney/ABC.

Disney Buys Into Hulu. YouTube Should Be Worried.  (4/30)

As the initial exclusivity for NBC and Fox content expires, Hulu will be adding Disney/ABC videos and TV shows to its distribution mix as well. Hulu is becoming the preferred distribution channel for the big media companies. And it is succeeding in attracting the fickle Web audience. This should worry YouTube, which is still casting about for a business model that will pay for its enormous storage and bandwidth costs. The media companies cannot ignore YouTube just yet, but by strengthening Hulu they can give it their best content first.

A couple of days earlier, this article provided some extra background:

Hulu Now The Number Three U.S. Web Video Site. Soon To Be Number Two.  (4/28)

Just last month, we wrote that Hulu had gained some 10 million viewers to become the fourth largest video portal on the web. Now, it’s slain another rival to the list: Yahoo, to move into #3 — at least in terms of videos viewed.

To be clear, the new March U.S. numbers released by comScore show that Hulu is still slightly behind Yahoo’s video properties when it comes to unique viewers. But the NBC and Fox-backed Hulu should pass it any day now in that category as well. Meanwhile, the number two player, Fox Interactive Media (which runs MySpace), is slipping just as quickly as Hulu is rising in videos viewed. It could well be as soon as this month when Hulu moves into the number two web video position.

Needless to say,  I wondered about the name. Silly me for thinking it was a take-off on “hula” or something Hawaiian. NOOOOOOOOOO, it’s actually a Chinese name! From Wikipedia:

The name Hulu comes from two Mandarin Chinese words, hulu (simplified Chinese: 葫芦; traditional Chinese: 葫蘆; pinyin: húlú; Wade-Giles: hu-lu) “calabash, bottle gourd” and hulu (simplified Chinese: 互录; traditional Chinese: 互錄; pinyin: hùlù; Wade-Giles: hu-lu) “interactive recording.”

The company blog explains:

In Mandarin, Hulu has two interesting meanings, each highly relevant to our mission. The primary meaning interested us because it is used in an ancient Chinese proverb that describes the hulu as the holder of precious things. It literally translates to “gourd,” and in ancient times, the hulu was hollowed out and used to hold precious things. The secondary meaning is “interactive recording.” We saw both definitions as appropriate bookends and highly relevant to the mission of Hulu. ^[4][5]

(Here’s the link to the above-mentioned blog post at Hulu with a picture of the young group (mostly of Chinese background?) who worked on choosing the name: http://blog.hulu.com/2008/05/13/meaning-of-hulu/.) (Note: For all their care, it seems that “Hulu” has some unusual meanings in other languages anyway. For a sampling, see:  Hulu Translates To “Cease” and “Desist” in Swahili. Oops.)

My next stop was a visit to the Hulu site at http://www.hulu.com/.  The “News” channel has a few sub-sections, but I just looked at the Politics section closely. Of course, it varies day to day, but it certainly is NOT a comprehensive news site…an awful lot of clips featuring unchallenged spin from the Administration and cable talk shows on the day I looked.  Hulu is entirely commercial content, so you won’t see any original “ads” or political discourse from the peons here, like you see at YouTube.

Who’s running Hulu for NBC, FOX, and Disney?

The CEO is one Jason Kilar. From Business Week:

Jason Kilar serves as Chief Executive Officer of Hulu, LLC. Mr. Kilar has been Chief Executive of online video joint venture of NBC Universal, Inc. and News Corp., since July 9, 2007. He serves as Special Advisor of KBL Acquisition Corp. IV*. He served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Application Software at Amazon.com Inc. since May 2003 and was responsible for Amazon’s Marketplace business. From February 2002 to May 2003, Mr. Kilar served as Vice President of Worldwide … Application Software of Amazon.com Inc., where he joined in May, 1997 as a Product Manager. From October 2001 to February 2002, Mr. Kilar served as Vice President of Marketplace of Amazon.com Inc. and served as its Vice President of Books, Music, and Video & DVD from February 2001 to October 2001 and serves as its Vice President. He began his career with The Walt Disney Company, where he worked for Disney Design & Development. He serves on the board of Management Leadership for Tomorrow. He has been Director of AdReady, Inc. since November 28, 2007. Mr. Kilar received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School…

The company is providing  investment capital for Hulu is Providence Equity. Of course, there’s a “global presence”:

Working collaboratively from offices in Providence, New York, London, Hong Kong and New Delhi, our 74 investment professionals pursue opportunities as a unified team across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Our sector focus and international mandate enable us to dedicate our full resources to building global leaders in the media, entertainment, communications and information industries, regardless of location.

The large “team” running this firm has some interesting names on the roster.

Michael K. Powell, now a Sr. Advisor for PE, formerly FCC chairman during the Bush Administration

In addition to Kilar, there are a lot of people with Harvard ties, work history with some of the large investment banks (with a number of them with a history at Morgan Stanley), and other interesting backgrounds. Here’s a sampling of some of the names I peeked at…there are many others with similiar ties on the long list of “the team”:

• Senior Managing Directors  Glenn M. Creamer and Paul J. Salem both come out of Harvard and Brown with interesting director backgrounds over and above the Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, and Prudential experience.  Others I took a peek at include:
• COO  Gary S. Weinstein …Lehman Brothers
• Managing Director Julie A. Fisher … The World Bank  &  J.P. Morgan
• Managing Director Christopher P.  Halpin …Goldman Sachs

• Chief Compliance Officer Fred Franklin (who “served for ten years as Assistant Director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement”)… from Bear Stearns

So, it looks like the total capture of the minds of the younger generation by the mass media will be complete if most of them gravitate to Hulu.  If YouTube can’t survive, will the creative video we see there dry up or become fragmented across many smaller sites?

Hulu is just another piece of the puzzle as the media “clamps down” to control what media content users see.  Scary, very scary indeed.

***

*KBL Acquisition Corp. IV is involved in “miscellaneous”  investment services but is a big player in the healthcare industry (also KBL I, II, III)

Hulu Company Profile.

GE media holdings (From Columbia Journalism Review site)

News Corp. media holdings (From Columbia Journalism Review site)

Disney media holdings (corporate site)

Here in Pflugerville it’s been Deutschen Pfest weekend. With a five year old daughter, naturally I spent much of my time on the midway, where I realized that carnies are WOM masters. I chatted up a few of them and present three of their secrets below.

Give your customer something others will ask about. “Make sure people win some of the big stuffed animals early,” said the guy running the darts booth. “They carry ‘em around and other folks ask where they got ‘em. And it lets everybody know that you’re running a booth where people can win.” Sure, you give your customers value worth talking about and add forward-to-a-friend buttons to your email newsletters. But what do you give that makes prospective customers ask them about you?

Tailor your pitch and your product to your customer. “Think you can throw hard enough? Betcha can’t”, yelled the man with the milk bottle game to a 20-something guy and his friends. The 20-something tried to walk past but his friends wouldn’t let him – he had to try (and fail) several times. A few minutes later a mom with a seven-year-old walked by, and the pitch was completely different. “Let her step up and try,” the carnie encouraged. “She’s a guaranteed winner.” He scaled the game down to three milk bottles (instead of four), coached her on the right toss, and sent her on her way with a prize. We’ll all happily refer a friend to someone who’s shown they treat each customer as an individual, because we know they’ll have a better experience.

Make your customer a co-conspirator. The woman running the hoops game spent time teaching my daughter the trick: throw underhand so that it comes down vertically into the hoop. “It’s smaller than a regulation hoop, honey,” she said. “The boys always throw free-throw style because they think they’ll look silly throwing underhand, and it’ll never go in that way. But now you know the secret. Don’t tell the boys, y’hear?” My daughter’s only five so she never got one in, but she enjoyed laughing at the teenage boys trying their best free throws.

Photo by minvervah

How this works is that as a subscriber when you pull up a Hoover’s company report and view the people at the company, there is another link that allows you to see people in your LinkedIn network that are also at the company.  At the bottom of a Hoover’s record it provides a list of people on LinkedIn at the company within your network and you can sort by relevance which allows you to see which of your contacts has a connection with a particular person.  This increase the value of making sure you have a wide network of contacts.

Article

With the assistance of The TAS Group, ESR recently surveyed nearly 400 users of the following technologies to determine the effects that these new technologies in helping them win B2B sales opportunities:

• Jigsaw;
• LinkedIn;
• Twitter;
• Plaxo;
• Facebook;
• Hoover’s or OneSource.

The pace of technology development today is dizzying. It seems as though a new sales-related technology appears daily. The question is, do these new technologies produce additional sales or just consume valuable selling time and distract sales leaders and their teams from focusing on what can really improve performance?

A few specifics from the survey:

1. 35% of respondents say that LinkedIn has helped them win sometimes or often;
2. 69% of respondents say they don’t use Twitter. Of those that douse the tool, 20% say it has not helped them win;
3. 8% of respondents say that Facebook has helped them win sometimes or often.

Buy the 10-page ESR/Insight™ Brief, The New Social Media: Do They Enable B2B Selling? now.

Photo credit: © altiso – Fotolia.com

A friend contacted me the other day looking for information on API management alternatives to Mashery. I previously worked with this friend during the Hoover’s implementation of HAPI. I wondered if they were unhappy with the business relationship.

It turns out that this research was for another friend. “Why don’t you set up a conference call?” I quipped. No good, the other guy is out of the office for a week. We’ll figure something out.

A few days later I received an email from Mark, a former manager while at HP software. He wanted to connect me with Martin Tantow, co-founder of  3scale Solutions, a venture which he is associated with that does API management. Okay, I get it already; I need to share what I know for the benefit of others.

Over the next few days and weeks I’ll write about why we needed an API, the internal fears that we had to overcome, and the vendor selection process. I’ll write about my current API management problems, and how they really are not API management, rather integration challenges. All this is coming from a person that has listened to the pitches, attended the conferences, met the founders and used the services. I’ll share what I know and invite you to do the same.

Deal?