Blog Entry

Law #10 of the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Trout and Ries is The Law of Division.

Over time, a category will divide and become two or more categories.

This is one of those laws that seems obvious in theory but is often violated in action.

What it is saying is that with time a category is going to break up, subdivide, and specialize. Seems completely obvious. Also seems obvious that with time, products in the category should do the same thing. They should break up, subdivide, and specialize.

Doesn't happen that way. Remember GroupWise Document Management. Instead of subdividing, Novell combined. The key word here being convergence. It killed the SoftSolutions product completely, taking it from #1 in the market to nearly zero in the market.

Novell Teaming + Conferencing is a step in the right direction. If the collaboration market is subdividing, then products and offerings from vendors should subdivide as well. That is why Novell Teaming + Conferencing is not GroupWise Teaming + Conferencing. It is its own product. An attempt by Novell to attack a segment of the collaboration market with a specialized approach.

Ironically, it is Microsoft that is now violating the Law of Division by looking at making SharePoint part of Exchange.

For more on this topic you can read my additional comments at http://gwbliss.blogspot.com