During  a social gathering this weekend I was asked for advice on a new business web services based venture. The idea itself seemed sound and after bashing about cloud or not cloud we moved onto where the next steps would take them and the product development. What struck me was that whilst the original idea is solid there were 2 main pitfalls waiting for them.

The first was how they were going to measure success in a manner that made sense to prospective clients,  essentially  how are they going to measure their new customers success.

The second was how to pick the right next step industry to replicate this success, the ones "in vision" were so removed from the initial idea that there is real danger of failing because it wasn't clearly defined why the original idea was groundbreaking.

This conversation is no different to the ones we are having with IT departments on emerging technologies - and virtualisation especially springs to mind.  Virtualisation is a fantastic way of managing IT sprawl and reducing IT spend. Successful Virtualisation however should be seen as much more than this, it is a tool to make the business units more efficient and only with correct management can this be a truly business transforming initiative of value. Virtualising everything because you can without understanding this value in each instance  makes for watered down success or even project failure from your client's (the "user's") point of view.