Our main activity and strength that made us Atlassian Experts and hopefully still distinguishes from many others is "Development".
Our New Zealand customers often call us in because they want customisations and setup beyond ordinary. Many of our global "services customers" – arrived to us by first using our add-ons.
- {"plugins-countries":[{"name":"Brasil","href":"","value":5},{"name":"UK","href":"","value":31},{"name":"Europe","href":"","value":406},{"name":"Singapore","href":"","value":10},{"name":"Canada","href":"","value":26},{"name":"USA","href":"","value":275},{"name":"Israel","href":"","value":7},{"name":"Other","href":"","value":15},{"name":"New Zealand","href":"","value":130},{"name":"Russia","href":"","value":11},{"name":"Australia","href":"","value":81},{"name":"China","href":"","value":10}]}
Our EasySSO Single Sign-On add-on for Atlassian product is deployed in more than 200 global locations, ultimately making Atlassian experience way better than one without it. "It's like air, you notice when it is not there" is a real comment from many customers. By now we've sold our add-ons to 28 countries, but it is Europe that is historically our biggest market (followed by US, New Zealand and Australia) – our first international customer in 2009 was from Zurich, Switzerland. Going to Barcelona and talking to other Experts working in the market is not only exciting but vital to understanding the needs of their customers.
AtlasCamp offers training workshops – I am seriously torn between Cloud track and Marketing/Continuous Integration track. We have 18 commercial plugins on Marketplace and 5 more in the pipeline for 2016. Many of these are fit to be "extended" into the Cloud. Better marketing would help us to convert prospects into happy Atlassian customers better. Novel approaches to CI and how we test our solutions will remove the risks for the customers and make us more responsive to change.
Our plugins are already re-sold by several partners - BitVoodoo, Pix Software, ServiceRocket, Catch Limited, Avono, Valiantys.
However, the same names from a rather limited list keep popping up. Why not others? We are in dire need to network and communicate with other Partners on the development level to make them understand the benefits. As such I would love to run a breakout session at AtlasCamp and have applied to lead one tentatively titled "Developing SSO add-on", intending to share our development and non-development challenges. I am actively contacting partners to arrange "sideline" sessions where I can demo the product and discuss how we can help. If you want one - get in touch!
Ultimately, better plugins and better plugin sales – for us directly mean more customers, which translates into more sales to Atlassian, including new ones for Atlassian's products, which we can achieve by having our sales activity (otherwise a challenge in our small market) propped up by our add-on revenue. This very month is a good example - our increased add-on revenue will allow us to concentrate on planning our participation ITx2016 and Atlassian Summit 2016.
Needless to say – a mere perspective of going around the world (WLG->AKL->LAX->FRA->BCN->LHR->AKL->WLG) courtesy of Air New Zealand and their partners is a thrill!
I will attempt to keep the diary of the adventure on our Twitter account @techtime_co_nz. As usual: watch this space!