When I saw this recent headline Aruba to buy ‘Switzerland of network management’, I cringed and knew I had to share this tiny rant.
Too many people in technology want to be “Switzerland.”
Nothing against the Swiss or their beautiful country, but this terrible shorthand needs to expire. No one should aim for that position, even if you can build a business there in the short term. When technology companies tout their position as Switzerland, what they intend to signal is their independence and the powerful position their neutrality confers upon them. How being a crossroads for transactions (network or financial or otherwise) is a sustainable position even when few of the endpoints appreciate having a third-party in the stream of business.
What being “Swiss” in this context really means:
- I’m late, so I have to work with everyone else who got there first.
- I was early, but my attempt at dominating the marketplace didn’t pan out, so I’ll play nice with others now.
- My business is small and at the mercy of those on my “borders,” whether technical or economic.
Switzerland is fundamentally a defensive position. You react to others and stay small enough so none of the big players in your market care to challenge your tenuous position. Your only offensive moves are to keep smaller players from replacing you, because Switzerland in the technical marketplace isn’t an exclusive position. Rather, supporting the market leader’s customers’ needs is often a requirement for all entrants, whether they explicitly aim to replace the market leader or build a complementary business. So, everyone (even the market leaders) includes as much “neutrality” as the market forces them to support.
If you must use a geographical analogy, consider this.
When you think of Microsoft or Google or Oracle, what country do you imagine as representative of their market positions?
It’s not Switzerland.
Future musing: in the new world geography and economy, will Dubai replace Switzerland as the code word for the nexus of money and cultures and platforms?
Personal note: perhaps I should have been more concerned about CNET’s prospects when I read this BusinessWeek interview back in 2004.