[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

Sun Oct 3 08:39:51 CEST 2010

On Sunday 03 Oct 2010 19:34:28 Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
+> 2010/10/3 andré <andr55 at laposte.net>:
+> > Targeting the school boards makes a lot of sense.
+> 
+> Again this is something you can not generalize, different countries
+> have different structures.
+> In Germany it is not a school board who decides what software will be
+> bought for a certain region or school. This is decided on state level
+> for the various states of the federal republic. You have to go to some
+> state office and compete with the reps of Microsoft. You do not talk
+> to parents or teachers, it's some bureaucrats who decide this over
+> here (with very few exceptions).
+> 
+> Same with many other countries. This school board system as in the US
+> is not a world wide system.
+
+Marc is talking about Canada and despite rumours to the contrary, Canada is as 
+much a part of the US as New Zealand is a part of Australia.  
+
+And In fact in all of these countries and the UK as a matter of fact, software 
+purchase is a school decision. Education Departments, as in NZ, may negotiate 
+with vendors for a block price for schools but the purchase is the schools 
+decision.     
+
+Targeting schools does make a lot of sense in a Global context.
+
+One local school here just went with Ubuntu on 1500 netbooks 
+
+http://manaiakalani.blogspot.com/search/label/1%3A1
+
+which will be one for every student.  Interestingly they don't actually 
+advertise the OS, although they will be using the go-oo.org version of OOo 
+because of it's Googledocs/Zoho integration.  
+
+There are a lot of other examples, you can talk to the people at the sharp end 
+on the K12OSN maillist if you want.  It is a significant market, just ask MS, 
+they bleed just to keep a toehold.. 
+
+Cheers
+GL 
+
+-- 
+Graham Lauder,
+OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ
+http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html
+
+OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant.
+
+INGOTs Assessor Trainer
+(International Grades in Open Technologies)
+www.theingots.org
+