I'm not a salesman

By Andrew Clifford

It is difficult to get out of your comfort zone and do something different.

I've been working on the Metrici platform for many years, and it is finally ready. It works well, and it is fantastically effective. I need to get more people using it.

The problem is, I'm not a salesman. I'm just a guy who fiddles with computers for a living. I don't know how to sell it, but more importantly, selling it scares me.

There is a big temptation to keep tinkering with the product, and keep making it better. That keeps me in my comfort zone, and puts off the day when I have to show it to other people. But I know I shouldn't wait any longer. It's already good enough. In fact, it's much better than good enough, it's fantastic.

We do already sell Metrici through partners. Our biggest success so far has been the itSMF Monitor product, an online tool for IT service management self-assessment and benchmarking. It is really good to see our technology being used so enthusiastically.

It is great to have success, but to make sense of all the hard work we've put in, we need to get a lot more people using it. We have to move it from a powerful niche product to a mass-market product.

So, what is Metrici?

Metrici is a software-as-a-service platform for creating and delivering software-as-a-service solutions. You can use it to deliver a simple website, or a complex enterprise application, or anything in between. Its defining characteristic is that it represents all data, content and applications in the same way, and that rather than using lots of different tools (database, content management, application development, web design), you can do all of these in the same way in a single tool. Its unique selling points are:

• It is very versatile - you can use it for any mix of data, content and application.
• It copes well with complex, uncertain or changing requirements.
• It is very fast to develop and deploy, ten times faster than conventional methods.

It has an impressive list of features:

• 100% web-based, no software to install.
• Fully self-service, you provision and install it yourself.
• Mobile-friendly.
• Fully re-stylable and re-brandable for resale.
• Version management.
• Product packaging, publication and subscription.
• Expert system.
• Email integration.
• Extensive libraries of built-in components.
• Comprehensively secure.
• Comprehensive permission model.
• Comprehensive user management.
• Extensive API.
• Self-documenting.
• Fully extensible.
• Data import/export.
• Extensive inheritance model for easy customisation.
• Web services for integrating with other applications.
• Full set of web application components - forms, tables, upload/download, graphing, dashboards.
• Background calculation and caching for high performance.

It really is a "do anything" tool, and it could revolutionise how we deliver many IT solutions. But I'm not a salesman, and I don't expect you to believe me. All I can do is show you what it is and how to use it. So, I'm going to start a step-by-step, week-by-week guide to the Metrici platform. Rather than me telling you how good it is, I will show you how to use it and let you decide.

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