The last few years of the technology market, and the business market overall, have been a remarkable period in time. Much will be written, and has; about this era and further analysis will try to determine its underlying cause and effect. However, rather than overly analyzing the past, technology executives should be looking ahead to try determining exactly how their organizations can take advantage of the situation. After all a market anomaly usually brings with it an immense opportunity. The leading edge technology executives are already asking themselves, "Where to from here?" This article will explore three aspects to consider when determining what next steps your organization should take after the last three years of market turmoil.

Assess the Competition: The first thing to think about considering your next move, is to determine what the competitive landscape looks like after three years. The marketplace looks very different today than it did three years ago. Not only because of the fall-out from the bear market, which some would argue is still not over, but also from the natural evolution of technology, business models and organizational focus. Companies that were previously deadly competitors, AOL and Microsoft as an example, have recently settled their differences in the technology arena, or so it would appear, to enable each to focus on their core competencies. While others, Peoplesoft and Oracle as an example, are locked in battle, over market share among other things, to determine who will survive in the long run. All of these examples should illustrate to the astute executive that you and your organization need to do a comprehensive analysis of the competition. Who is doing what to whom, when, where and how? Who has left the marketplace, who has entered, and where are the competitive pressures coming from today? Where has the competition leaped ahead? Where are they lagging? What makes them still desirable in the marketplace today? The data from this assessment will form the first part of your strategy for where to go from here. .

Analyze Your Product Portfolio: The final area to examine before your strategy can be complete is your product portfolio. A company's products are its lifeblood. They are fundamentally what is desirable about the organization to clients and also what the world views as being desirable about the company. There can be situations where the clients themselves are viewed as being more desirable than the company's products, but then, in a sense, the clients have become the company's products as a result of this inverted point-of-view. A company's plan for moving forward should take into account the first two elements and map them to an assessment of their product portfolio. What do we have that the market needs and wants? What are we doing that is no longer relevant? What should we stop doing? What should we do more of than we do today? Where do our clients find the most pain in dealing with us? How have our competitors beaten us to the market place and better answered client needs? What features and functions are mission-critical and what are nice-to-have? What enables a client to get the maximum value from our products? Answering these questions on a product by product basis will provide the third and final piece of the puzzle.

Net net, a successfully implemented plan to assess the competition, survey the customers and analyze your products will enable you to definitively answer the question, "Where to from here?" The answer to this question will then enable you to take the right proactive steps to ensure your organization rises to the top of the technology heap after this market turns around.