Technology adoption curve

Did you know that Microsoft recently added Mobile RFID to BizTalk server?

This event alone does not have an outstanding impact on the industry, but inspires some thoughts. Generally, each technology or product has (or has to have) two stages of realization, two waves of value generation:

• Vendor invests into product development and realizes its value by selling to customers.
• Product consumers invest into product deployment and learning and realize its value by generating revenue for themselves.

In general, this means that while they fully undergo their curve consumers are not ready to adopt new technology. Usually, you will not embarrass deployment of new technology until you realized the investment in previous.

This means that there are some natural limitations on how often vendors can release new technologies/platforms/products. If they release too often customers are not ready yet to make new investments and technology adoption will be hindered. If release cycle is too long less revenue will be generated.

Of course, these waves are smoothed over by large number of customers out there in the market, each in different phase of technology deployment; by number of vendors offering competitive products; and by a whole lot of other factors. But still it is important to understand these waves to build a successful marketing and release strategy.

Think of customers' pains and try to relief them not to amplify by asking to deploy new product when he is having hard times returning the investment from previous.