[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

[Graham Lauder]

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