The document discusses the past, present, and future of the HDF Group. It talks about improving the open source quality and expanding their ability to help customers. It also discusses preparing to reach mainstream markets by crossing the "valley of death" and addresses technological challenges for the future.
1. The HDF Group
HDF
Past, Present, Future
Mike Folk
The HDF Group
The 14th HDF and HDF-EOS Workshop
September 28-30, 2010
September 28-30, 2010 HDF/HDF-EOS Workshop XIV 1 www.hdfgroup.org
5. Improving the foundation
• From technology driven to market driven
• Raising the open source quality bar
• Expanding our ability to help customers
• Expanding the kinds of things we're good at
September 28-30, 2010 HDF/HDF-EOS Workshop XIV 5 www.hdfgroup.org
6. Preparing to reach mainstream markets
Mainstream
Markets
Time
September 28-30, 2010 HDF/HDF-EOS Workshop XIV 6 www.hdfgroup.org
7. Crossing the chasm to mainstream markets
Valley of death for
high tech products
Mainstream
Markets
Time
September 28-30, 2010 HDF/HDF-EOS Workshop XIV 7 www.hdfgroup.org
9. TECHNOLOGICAL
CHALLENGES
September 28-30, 2010 HDF/HDF-EOS Workshop XIV 9 www.hdfgroup.org
Notas do Editor
That’s pretty much the end of the middle years. So we’ve covered the history of the HDF project from the beginning to the present.Now let’s look at the future.
It’s pretty easy to come up with a duration for the early years and the middle years.It’s quite a bit harder to do that for the future, because who knows how long the future will be?Nevertheless, I’ve divided the future into two parts, which I’ll call “the near future” and just “the future.”We’ll start with the near future.
Not looking so much for dramatic change as just doing things better.Become better at what we already doThereby lay a better foundation to attain our mission of providing high quality support and becoming sustainable.Four parts to this…From technology driven to market drivenRaising the open source quality barExpanding and improving our ability to help customersGet better at doing many of the things we already do, and perhaps build expertise in a few new areas.
Picture captures an important aspect of where we want to go as a company.Namely, to broaden the base of supporters, hopefully reaching a level of acceptance for HDF that will guarantee sustainability.In the 1950s someone developed this technology diffusion model. The idea is that technologies typically begin by serving small markets of technology enthusiasts and visionaries.As a technology matures and proves itself, more pragmatic users adopt it, and later more conservative communities adopt it. The pragmatists and conservatives make up a much larger market than enthusiasts and visionaries, And to become sustainable it is very useful to reach these broader markets.We’re a technology-driven company with a few customers, and those customers could be thought of as visionaries, people who are willing to take some risk to be able to address data challenges in new and different ways. In the future, we want to broaden the base of users of HDF. Strategically will help us not only become more sustainable, but will make us better at what we do and enable us to help many more people and organizations that have to deal with data challenges.
In the 1990s, observing the .com boom, Geoffrey Moore described what he saw as a problem with technology diffusion model. Namely, many technologies started out with great promise, but never made it to the mainstream.The model describes a gap between each of the sectors, but those gaps are small. Moore argues: gap between Visionaries and pragmatists is much larger. It’s a chasm, and many tech products never make it across the chasm. “Valley of death…”We feel we need to cross that chasm as well.Moore describes several strategies:Make sure the cost of entry is low. Don’t assume adopters will be willing to go to a lot of effort to adopt the technology. Thus, focus on quality, easy of use.Think about the “whole product,” not just the core technology. Pragmatists need the technology to fit in with all of the other technologies they use. We need to make sure our technology integrates well with those other technologies. Having HDF play well with databases and applications like MATLAB are important in this regard.Focus on capabilities that benefit users, not on cool features that have limited utility.Don’t try to move into a lot of markets at one time. D-Day strategy: focus on one beach head. Put your energies into winning over that market, then explore others. These are the kinds of things we are thinking about as we lay our foundation in the near future.
Long term futureI’ll focus on:Tech challenges Institutional strategies
A simple, durable but evolvable model and implementationSelf-descriptionSpecification documentationPreservation-based evolutionProviding different ways to view the same informationIntegration with preservation frameworks
