Kendra Foundation Business Plan
Headings from PaulEvans email http://www.kendra.org.uk/lists/archive/k-framework/msg00096.html
- Clear objectives and overview of the opportunity
- Kendra Initiative, an independent non-profit organisation, has been established to research and build an open architecture system that will provide the entertainment/content industry with a platform for content distribution and delivery over the Internet and facilitating revenue generation for content owners/aggregators and service providers.
- See:
- (Preferably) a design for the software - if possible
- We design as we go. But there are lots of interface goals on the Wiki. See:
- Timescales for design, implementation, testing, deployment
- I hope to have a prototype to demo at Milia 2004. Then I hope to get funding in.
- Management team details e.g. who will manage the project. If you're looking at obtaining significant money you really need somebody who is experienced in these matters
- So far I have Neil Harris hired to build the prototype.
- A clear proposition to third parties as to why they should contribute the money i.e. What commercial / other benefit they would get out of it. The 'good publicity' angle simply isn't enough
- Having an open market for content would increase the amount of money changing hands and so increase prosperity - I guess - I'm no economist. If one personally can't see the benefit of having "I want what I want, when I want and I want to be able to pay for it!" then I can't do much about it. That's the goal! ;-)
- If this is a business plan you must provide some numbers. What is the "Return on Investment" in your future world?
- Benefits:
- Access Providers
- Save money on backbone bandwidth. Provide your users with broadband content and the fuel the take-up of highbandwidth connectivity.
- End Users
- Get rid of net-congestion. Pay for the content that you want.
- Content Distributors
- Get access to more content to distribute. Get access to more distribution points.
- Content Providers
- Get a distribution network without having to build your own edge server network. Content gets mirrored close to end users so adding quality and commercial value.
- Vendor with music titles who wants to distribute to cable or internet company as distribution source.
- ISP speed download and server storage benefits
- H/w Vendors efficiency benefits re speed and storage linked to edge server technology etc....
- S/W developers easy of programme, implementation and breadth and depth of other bolt on compatible S/W.
- What equipment would be needed for development and testing
- Lots of lovely Apple kit please! ;-) Seriously, servers and bandwidth. But we're only testing on Kendra servers so I don't think it'll be astronomical costs here.
- An exploitation (marketing) plan
- Much of this will be done by building useful products and get people to market by word of mouth. Most effective way.
- Product road map
- I can give you the end goal. For starters see:
- How you will work with standards institutes
- All the way. This project is all about technology aggregation. If we can help it we don't want to create anything new we just want things to work better. So, think of Kendra as a thin skeleton to hang existing standards and competing technology off.
- Cashflow forecasts for at least 2 years
- I reckon 10 people maximum. 100K each. I want to work with the top people. I'd prefer not to have an office as people will be spread out globally. We'll be working remotely. Most people will be broadband enabled and that is not a significant cost. Then marketing is the other big spend.
- Competitor analysis
- There is no body out there with our clear goals. There are many who overlap though which is a good thing.