In the last 24 hours Ben Bernanke says he can see the light at the end of the economic tunnel and Austin-based Vignette is the newest acquisition of Canadian content management experts Open Text.

Two things to notice here. First, we’re in for at least several months more of what, according to Bernanke, will amount to further consolidation and acquisition before current conditions of market uncertainty draw to an end. Second, when current market conditions of uncertainty draw to an end, it will be precisely those companies that, like Open Text, have not only weathered the storm, but have grown and added new functionality that stand the most to gain.

If you’re an applications developer this means a couple of things. It means that you’ve got to a product roadmap that’s as strong right now as ever. And it means that you’ve got to continue executing and delivering on that roadmap, even during the downturn.

If you’re a systems integrator, the coming thaw means that you need to continue to develop and grow strategic partnerships. Some point in the future will see your existing accounts newly ready to purchase and ready to select from new service offerings. Better the service offerings be yours than your competitors’.

In either case the message is much the same: you’ve got to do much more than merely survive the downturn, you’ve got to be ready for the coming feature frenzy.

Strong players in verticals across the board are readying new features and services right now, rather than waiting for a better budget cycle. At Jaduka, we see our contribution to the coming market upturn in precisely this way. Automated voice notifications will soon be an integral feature of the way that business processes get done on all major SaaS platforms. CRM in Salesforce or Appian works faster and better when selectively enabled with automated voice notifications to clients and when speak-and-record diary services are made available to employees in the field.

All this means that product managers at any of the major application developers or system integrators now have important choices to make. The markets will turn and purchasing behaviors will change. Will you be ready when they do? And will your featured offering be better then than it is today?

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