Byrne, on the other hand, says that the real problem of deploying open source across the martech space is that it’s not really a suitable foundation for creating SaaS apps which live in a multi-tenant cloud.

Open source software is typically downloaded by developers, “massaged,” then delivered back to the community. By it’s nature, it’s single tenant, Byrne explained. “If you’re in the cloud, you’re paying Azure or Amazon or somebody. The cloud is designed around a service model not a software licensing model, whereas open source is all about the software licensing and getting access to the single tenant. You don’t typically see open source solutions built cloud natively, from the ground up.”

Less than a week away from the start of the new fiscal year for many businesses on July 1, IT and marketing departments have already started their annual tug-of-war over martech purchasing platforms, tools and vendors. 

What are the best practices when buying martech for the 2021 fiscal year? It may be easier than you think.

Keynote presentation was given by Jarrod Gingras- Managing Director & Analyst, Real Story Group, on the topic 'The state-of-the-art Martech Stack: What it looks and how it works”.

During his presentation, Gingras explained, “Ideal customer engagement is right content to the right person in the right context at the right time and measure the effectiveness." 

While Byrne sees the benefits of using core elements of the DX stack from the key vendors, he is not a proponent of using a single vendor. “You may want to ‘anchor’ your stack with key vendors, like Salesforce for CRM and Adobe for Analytics or whatever, but you do not want to consign your stack to a single vendor. This is a cop-out and your customers will suffer,” said Byrne.

Miller echoed the exact sentiment around demos that Real Story Group Founder Tony Byrne discussed during his keynote talk on buying martech and the process he uses to evaluate technology.

"HubSpot has been making a play as a mid-market suite for some time, according to Tony Byrne, CEO and founder of Real Story Group. Byrne said the HubSpot CMS Hub is likely to be of interest only to existing Hubspot licensees and not the market more broadly. 'Even then,' he added, 'RSG always counsels never defaulting to a solution just because it comes from an incumbent vendor. Other WCM platforms can integrate with HubSpot's CRM and MAP (marketing automation platform) offerings as well.'"

In twenty years as an industry analyst evaluating martech vendor platforms, I’ve witnessed hundreds of enterprises try to make good technology purchase decisions. All too often they get it wrong.

You can’t blame those decision-makers. Marketers in particular face intense time pressures and can’t readily find good templates for doing this right.  Stress around making a poor choice sometimes leads to ill-advised short-cuts or paralyzing over-analysis. Read More...