Dare Obasanjo's 3 Laws of Platform Adoption: A DotNetNuke Perspective

Dare Obasanjo has an informative post up about the 3 Laws of Platform Adoption, which got me thinking about DotNetNuke as a platform for developers. The first competitor that comes to most peoples minds when thinking about DotNetNuke is Sharepoint but there are other Content Management Systems out there that are viable alternatives to small and medium businesses looking to step up their website in a cost efficient and functionality rich way. Joomla! seems to be getting a lot of attention among developers on the LAMP stack as a hip new replacement for phpNuke.

When it comes to using the 3 Laws of Platform Adoption as a metric I think DotNetNuke stacks up pretty well for your small to medium business. Lets take a look at the condensed version of the 3 Laws.

1. Developers adopt a platform when it offers differentiation from competitors


2. Developers adopt a platform when it reduces the cost of software development


3. Developers adopt a platform when it provides reach and/or better distribution

So, starting with the obvious number 1, what differentiates DotNetNuke from its competitors? For me, DotNetNuke is different than its competitors in that it is designed to run atop your existing Microsoft software without adding any licensing fees. Small business clients running *nix servers are few and far between, so the ability to leverage your existing technology resource investments gives people a warm and fuzzy feeling. As far as Sharepoint as a competitor is concerned, it just doesn't make sense for small businesses because of the licensing fees. I know that Sharepoint Services 3.0 is free to download for Windows Server 2003, but most of the cool features are only available by ponying up extra for MOSS.

In the world of providing custom solutions for small businesses, Cost = Time = Money. This is why DotNetNuke also has a good footing for number 2. From a developers standpoint DotNetNuke runs on very familiar, some would say it's even cheap (as in inexpensive), technology (Visual Studio Express, IIS, Windows Server, Vista, even XP), which means less setup, implementation, deployment and maintenance time. Developers can use the .Net language they are most comfortable in (C# all the way!) and utilize the functionality that DotNetNuke comes with right out of the box. Functionality like user profiles, role based security, multiple authentication providers, secure file access, and rich content editing.

DotNetNuke also has a strong and innovative community of users. The DotNetNuke Marketplace allows developers a place to distribute their products and services to a wide range of customers (current registered user base on DotNetNuke.com. The DotNetNuke core team has made it easy for users of DotNetNuke to find products in this marketplace by way of a link to the "Solutions Explorer" that is standard in all DotNetNuke installations. DotNetNuke acts like an open source community with a business mind. Along with the Marketplace, the introduction of Service Level Agreements that are competitively priced give other businesses the opportunity to make profits on helping users with their DotNetNuke problems.

Dare Obasanjo Makes Me Want To Work At Microsoft

I've been reading a lot of Dare Obasanjo's Blog (aka Carnage4Life) over at 25hoursaday.com. I came across the blog through some posts on the CodingHorror blog a while back and have been a subscriber since setting up my Google Reader about a month ago. I've read about the drama before and the previous hiatus on postings, I'm glad he is still around for me to find.

There are a couple of things I have to say about the blog. The first is that I like the content because it provides a good mix of technical information and programming/software commentary. Sometimes the technical details (especially when talking about different protocol RFC's) get a bit above my head, but that is probably a good thing because I end up learning more because of the helpful links that he supplies.

I like that someone like Dare is still getting excited about new language features even though he obviously has a lot of things on his plate. My earlier posts on functional programming (including my "Sexy" Aggregate function in Leveraging the DNN Event Logging API) came out about the time that his posts did, but I was just recently looking through the archives and came across them.

The other thing about the blog that I like, which may or may not be a good thing for Dare, is that it makes me want to work for Microsoft. If a person like Dare is having a good time there, at least most of the time, then it probably is an okay place. For Microsoft recruiters, it's kind of like what Shaq called Homeboy Marketing:

'Homeboy Marketing’

Marketers refer to it as guerrilla marketing, but O’Neal calls it “homeboy marketing… . Most people spend $2 million, $3 million for a commercial. With homeboy marketing, it’s all for free. When these TV stations want to interview me, I wear a FreeInternet hat. When consumers see me on TV, they also see all this stuff.”

Dare gets to do "Slam Dunk" technical posts about topics that interest him, and along the way readers (probably pretty technical readers) find out that Dare works for Microsoft. In this instance, it's me, a 26 year-old programmer on the come up. Maybe somewhere else it's the genius that gives Microsoft a winning search solution that takes out the feet of one of their competitors.

Anyway, this blog was originally started as a way to indirectly market the super-cool company I work at and I'm not currently looking for a job. But if I were...

P.S. I gotta make me some kind of blogspot widget that does that "Now Playing" thing at the bottom of Dare's Blog Posts. Maybe something that can pull information from Amazon and link there (I'm not a big fan of Apple right now, don't get me wrong I'm not one of those guys with a stick yelling "Get Off My Lawn" because all the cool kids are using Macs, I'll have to elaborate in another post). For now, I'm totally ripping it off, sorry:

Now Playing: Augustana - Boston