Pros

The products are good -- you can point to what you made and be proud. Also, there are lots of good people there. The company doesn't try to inflict an artificial culture on its people. If you are sick, they support you being out to get well. They seem to mostly keep the people they hire -- didn't seem to be much turnover.

Cons

Hard to get requirements or functional specs on product development., even when your job needs access to them -- didn't seem like they exist Embracing agile dev seemed to be just an excuse to fly by the seat of the pants... or maybe they had a plan (including specs & requirements?) and no longer felt like they needed to communicate it to other employees. Increasingly the main innovation was in China, not the U.S., which added to the communication issue. Sometimes odd politics led to surprising promotions or credit being given to the wrong people.

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to having a communicative development process with requirements and functional specs created and reviewed by other folks in the company -- both to help them get their jobs done and to provide valuable feedback to the development process.

Pros

The investment that Actuate has made in their new open source offerings is a daring move, and one that might get them the market share they need as a second tier business intelligence software provider. This technology, along with the community of open source developers that back it, have led to some very exciting technological advances that make the products very exciting to work with. Coupling these innovative products with their battle tested server offerings provides a fairly compelling story that mixes the innovation associated with open source with the stability provided by a seasoned and time tested delivery platform.

Cons

Actuate has changed its strategy numerous times, and I think this has led to confusion throughout the organization. At times, they have focused almost exclusively on marketing several different productized "reporting applications" that primarily targeted the financial sector, which makes up the majority of Actuate's install base of customers. As that sector has suffered, so has Actuate. They have also attempted to integrate several acquisitions with varying levels of success. The Performancesoft acquisition has not been well integrated, as both the technology and the skill set needed to market and sell it are very different from Actuate's traditional core competencies.

Advice to Senior Management

To avoid becoming an also-ran with an ever-shrinking customer base, Actuate needs to focus on their open source offerings and figure out a better way to monetize the market share they have gained.