What is OpenVote all about?
Please visit http://www.openvote.net or browse a product presentation at http://slideshare.net/tsigos/openvote for getting detailed pieces of information.
OpenVote has historically been the first software product developed by Virtual Trip and still is the most advanced from a technology point of view. It is a remote secure internet voting system with features of absolute vote privacy combined with universal verifiability of the results - A mix which probably remains unique, 10+ years after its development.
However, the OpenVote sales volume remains equal to zero all these years and is very likely to remain so for the years to come - Unless a very radical usage scenario comes out.
The OpenVote technology is based on PVSS algorithms and provides these nice features, which actually made it a cutting-edge technology product in 2001, when it was launched. In 2005 OpenVote was presented at the 3rd International Conference on Trust Management, which took place in INRIA, Paris, France from May 23rd to May 26th. Moreover, the demo paper was published in the conference proceedings by Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science: ISBN 978-3-540-26042-4.
Why has OpenVote been a commercial failure?
It is rather simple: If an 'election' is very important, the 'vote selling' problem, which is structural to any kind of remote voting - electronic or not, is too important to compromise. Moreover, even if this compromise is accepted, the overhead required for secure voting, like issuing digital certificates for voters, was quite high and making the system not attractive both from an economic and a usability point of view.
In 2001 we proposed a 'Faculty Evaluation System' to the University of Crete, based on OpenVote, which was unfortunately rejected. IMHO, that remains the only possibility for the system to be used.
Key lesson learnt
There exists a fundamental marketing rule: A company (a product, a service, etc) exists just because a Customer exists. OpenVote had no customers. We developed this product starting from a research outcome, not from a market need. Such a strategy can be disastrous commercially - As it was in the OpenVote case.
What's next?
Virtual Trip will publish OpenVote as free and open source software by the end of 2011.
Please visit http://www.openvote.net or browse a product presentation at http://slideshare.net/tsigos/openvote for getting detailed pieces of information.
OpenVote has historically been the first software product developed by Virtual Trip and still is the most advanced from a technology point of view. It is a remote secure internet voting system with features of absolute vote privacy combined with universal verifiability of the results - A mix which probably remains unique, 10+ years after its development.
However, the OpenVote sales volume remains equal to zero all these years and is very likely to remain so for the years to come - Unless a very radical usage scenario comes out.
The OpenVote technology is based on PVSS algorithms and provides these nice features, which actually made it a cutting-edge technology product in 2001, when it was launched. In 2005 OpenVote was presented at the 3rd International Conference on Trust Management, which took place in INRIA, Paris, France from May 23rd to May 26th. Moreover, the demo paper was published in the conference proceedings by Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science: ISBN 978-3-540-26042-4.
Why has OpenVote been a commercial failure?
It is rather simple: If an 'election' is very important, the 'vote selling' problem, which is structural to any kind of remote voting - electronic or not, is too important to compromise. Moreover, even if this compromise is accepted, the overhead required for secure voting, like issuing digital certificates for voters, was quite high and making the system not attractive both from an economic and a usability point of view.
In 2001 we proposed a 'Faculty Evaluation System' to the University of Crete, based on OpenVote, which was unfortunately rejected. IMHO, that remains the only possibility for the system to be used.
Key lesson learnt
There exists a fundamental marketing rule: A company (a product, a service, etc) exists just because a Customer exists. OpenVote had no customers. We developed this product starting from a research outcome, not from a market need. Such a strategy can be disastrous commercially - As it was in the OpenVote case.
What's next?
Virtual Trip will publish OpenVote as free and open source software by the end of 2011.
3 σχόλια:
Θα μπορούσε να έχει εφαρμογή σε ψηφοφορίες διοικητικών συμβουλίων για εταιρίες που είναι εισηγμένες στο χρηματιστήριο;
Δεν είναι κακή η ιδέα αυτή Θανάση. Γενικά, αναζητούμε τρόπους να το εκμεταλλευτούμε, έστω και 10 χρόνια μετά :-)
Το πεδίο εφαρμογής που προτείνεις νομίζω θα είχε ενδιαφέρον, ειδικά λόγω της κρίσης και των απαραίτητων βελτιώσεων στην εταιρική διακυβέρνηση.
Δημήτρη έστω και καθυστερημένα, πέραν από την κρίση που αναφέρεις, από το 2010 το νομοθετικό πλαίσιο επιτρέπει απομακρυσμένες ψηφοφορίες σε Γ.Σ.
Εάν δεν υπήρχαν αυτές οι προϋποθέσεις (κρίση, νόμοι) τότε το συγκεκριμένο σενάριο χρήσης μάλλον δεν θα ήταν ρεαλιστικό.
Συνεπώς, πέραν από το Key lesson learned που αναφέρεις (production VS market orientation σε new service development) ίσως υπάρχουν και κάποια άλλα, όπως:
Οι early adopters μιας καινοτομίας μπορεί να μην είναι αυτοί που το RnD team είχε αρχικά κατά νου.
Αν η αγορά δεν είναι έτοιμη να αποδεχτεί την καινοτομία τότε ίσως χρειαστούν 10+ χρόνια για να βρεθούν early adopters ή για να ωριμάσουν οι συνθήκες.
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