Mindshare is valuable, was the point GP was making. If midsize customers ignore you because you're too expensive, and then implement something else before they get big enough to afford you, where do you get new customers? Forget growth, how do you replace attrition as your existing customers die?
Personally I can't say if that's actually happening with Splunk, but it's a very plausible scenario.
I've recently dealt with multiple companies who started using IBM Aspera (which as a vendor to them means we have to use it too) only for it to work miserably. I've also seen a couple tiny, perfectly functional MySQL databases replaced by expensive, slower Oracle databases with much higher maintenance costs.
I think once a customer with a big enough budget is recognized by sales at one of these big organizations they make the sale happen. They talk to the higher-ups and either make them happy, or feed them a lot of FUD (or both), and then they're in, regardless of what the people working with the products (many of whom might be external vendors or consultants!) think.
They're basically focused on more traditional sales & marketing instead of more grassroots sales & marketing (mindshare), but at least in my experience they definitely still get new customers.
> Mindshare is valuable, was the point GP was making. If midsize customers ignore you because you're too expensive, and then implement something else before they get big enough to afford you, where do you get new customers? Forget growth, how do you replace attrition as your existing customers die?
Somehow companies manage to make it work extracting money from your existing money-is-no-object customers. Oracle and IBM have basically zero mind-share amongst HN reading folks, but yet there they are.
Personally I can't say if that's actually happening with Splunk, but it's a very plausible scenario.