A strong brand helps to increase market share, and can attract new development projects from partners and paying customers. The strength of the three way interaction is what gives the company the ability to grow in good conditions, and the resiliency to carry on through more difficult times. As MontaVista adopts the above strategies and starts to to see growth in line with the growth of its markets, it will have to decide how best to execute various tasks. Today, the main decisions in this context are what to farm out, and what to do in-house. However, arrangements where work is shared between the company and its partners are likely to be necessary.
Marketing is probably too crucial to the growth strategies to trust to an outside entity.
This leaves business administration and distribution as potential candidates for out-sourcing. Of course, enough talent must be retained in house to efficiently interact with the service providers, and to keep the venders honest, but farming out work for payroll, benefits, procurement, accounting, and similar tasks might be cheaper than overhead of doing it in house. Out-sourcing distribution is also relatively low risk, assuming the CD is assembled in house. This risk is further reduced by the fact that the web is a good if not preferred distribution channel for customers. Organizational recommendations MontaVista is essentially a knowledge peddler.