If you sit down and ask six software vendors which vegetable their product category most resembles and why, the answers can be surprisingly informative. Who thinks security is a rotten tomato, and who compared systems management to a coconut?
Tomato picture from Shutterstock
I grant you the question sounds slightly ridiculous, but it does serve as a useful life hack which I used when I was meeting with a stack of software companies during the Kickstart media technology forum in Queensland earlier this week. The purpose is twofold. Firstly, as a completely unexpected question, it helps to break the ice. Secondly, it forces companies to adopt a different approach and not just regurgitate their pre-prepared comments.
So what was I told? These are the responses I got from three security companies:
Sven Radavics, APAC General Manager, Imation Mobile Security: “It’d be a rotten tomato because in general terms until you put a layer of protection around it is just soft and vulnerable and mushy.”
Scott McKinnel, Managing Director ANZ, Check Point: “It’s a mushroom. It just pops up and there’s a lot of horseshit associated with it.”
Michael McKinnon, Security Advisor, AVG Technologies: “An onion, because its has many layers.”
And this is what I heard from three systems management providers, all of whom chose a fruit rather than a vegetable for reasons I can’t fully explain:
Ian Hodge, ANZ Managing Director, Dell Software: “It’s a pomegranate; there’s so many parts of it and a lot of seeds that can get in the way. And like a pomegranate, systems management is handy in a salad.”
Dermot McCann, MD Asia Pacific, Kaseya: “Systems management needs to be an orange. If you only get one layer of skin, it’s useless. If you take a slice, it might have a seed in it. You need all the components.”
Suhas Kelkar, APAC CTO, BMC: “It’s a coconut, because every piece of a coconut is useful.”
Alternative vegetable nominations are welcome in the comments.
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