RELUCTANCE AND RELISH
There's a vigorous discussion on Techmeme today on what, if anything, can make Enterprise software "sexy".
As you'd expect, the initial instigation of all this, was this post by Robert Scoble titled "Why enterprise software isn't sexy".
The bait was taken by ZDNet's Michael Krigsman, with a post on "Why Robert Scoble doesn't understand Enterprise software".
The whole resulting Techmeme discussion is entertaining to say the least.
And it brought to mind a panel discussion I had the honor of being part of at a conference a week or so ago in southern California, on the future of middleware. It was at the invitation of my friend Ramesh Jain.
I started my remarks on that panel with the observation that the relationship between companies and it's employees on the issue of how enterprise software gets used, had morphed quite a bit over the last few years.
I asked audience members to raise their hands if they used external web software and services like Google, etc., more to do their jobs every day, than the enterprise software applications and services provided by their employees.
Almost every hand in the room went up.
I then asked those with the opposite use pattern, that is, using more enterprise software than consumer web resources, to raise their hands.
Only one hand in the audience went up, along with one on the panel.
My fellow panelist who raised their hand happened to be an IBMer, obviously a big purveyor of big Enterprise software.
And the moderator later pointed out that the sole person in the audience who'd raised their hand to the second question, using more enterprise software resources, was a Google employee.
Of course he'd raise his hand. One has to assume that the "Enterprise software" at Google is as sexy as enterprise software can be.
I began and ended my comments on the panel with the observation that a dramatic transition has occurred over the last decade or so in that passions driving software applications and services in enterprises.
It used to be that Enterprises rolled out their software applications (like Oracle, SAP, etc.) with a great deal of relish, in how they could precisely control the nature of the applications, the security surrounding them, and the protocols and procedures that had to be followed by employees in using said software.
The employees of course used this software with a certain amount of reluctance over the last few decades.
But over the last half a decade or so, the passions have been reversed.
It's employees that are increasingly turning to web resources to do their jobs, and they're doing so with great relish.
And it's employers who're trying to deal with this demand for external software services, with an increasing amount of reluctance, especially when it came to concerns like security, liability and reliability.
Except of course if the employer happened to be Google, and the employees happened to be pretty happy Googlers. Then it seemed to be relish all around.
Not to mention being a sexy enterprise.
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