Hey Steve,

I read your editorial promoting the bundling of products as a benefit, and wasn't quite sure what to think. Are you saying that the bundling of products I want with products that I don't want is a good thing? For whom? For the people who actually want the product that I don't? Why can't I get the Food channel without the Golf channel, or the Golf channel without the Food channel?

I see you're doing a podcast. This is the ultimate on-demand form: not only can I get the product that I want without it being bundled with other products, but I can even skip forward and backward through your product. Similarly, TV programs are increasingly available as separate downloads, some of them with a price tag, some of them for free. But I'm able as a consumer of those products to choose which ones I want, instead of being presented a bundle consisting largely of products I don't want, for a higher price than the individual product that I want.

As for IT departments, I think the same analogy holds true. Why would a company absorb an IT package where half of it is not what they want or need? Isn't it better to pick and choose, and thereby get the products the company wants? If that means changing the business structure, so be it. Synergy can be achieved in different ways, by having a technical guy (not a sales guy) with some business sense talk to a company for maybe an hour a week or month, see where they are, what they're doing, and maybe talk to them about different ways of using IT - thereby generating interest in a product the company was not even aware of before.

Think of it as the trailers you get when watching a movie. If you're not interested, it only takes 30 seconds or a minute, but if you are, you can research the new movie and see if that is really something you want.

In short, I think bundling products is a bad idea - you're stuck with too much signal to noise ratio for the price you're paying, regardless of music industry, television or IT departments.

Cheers,

Ronald Bruintjes