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It depends on the situation. It's bad to forego millions in recurring revenue, but it's not bad to forego smaller gains if you have a vibrant business in other
by api 11y ago
It depends on the situation. It's bad to forego millions in recurring revenue, but it's not bad to forego smaller gains if you have a vibrant business in other areas and if those smaller gains require that you go down a path that will ultimately make your product a loser in the marketplace.
This is why Apple shuns "enterprise." They value user experience. Exposing UX to enterprise development priorities and methodologies is like exposing a kitten to mustard gas. Even a little bit does tremendous harm and it's definitely cruel.
Last I checked Apple was among the most valuable companies in the world. Their stuff is also heavily used in enterprise in spite of their dismissal of it. Sometimes a good product can make inroads into enterprise if it's good enough to overcome certain biases and entrenched pathologies. Some organizations have departments running their own "guerrilla IT" to support things that aren't awful vs. the awful stuff shoved down their throats by corporate IT.
The root problem with enterprise is that products are often built to artificial specifications that someone made up, not to actual specifications learned through real use and feedback or that are shaped by underlying reality. This results in a lot of superfluous complexity that does not reflect the actual complexity of the problem domain. Another major problem is that purchasing tends to be based on feature check boxes instead of actual evaluation of the product by people who will actually be using it. You'd be surprised how often a large org will make a major purchase without even consulting with those who will actually be using the product. I've also seen cases where people go so far as to pretend to use the "boat anchor" product while actually doing things using a different system purchased or built with off-normal-channels funds.
- cableshaft 11y agoApple shuns enterprise, huh? http://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/ http://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/ I've worked for startups and I've worked for enterprise apps, and at least the enterprise apps I've worked on actually got used by a good number of people. Some of the startup apps I worked on completely failed to find their audience precisely because someone in charge was making it all up as they went along and didn't base anything on what customers actually wanted. I tried to do the best I could in that situation, and sometimes managed to convince myself that the apps would find their audience, but the artificial specifications can exist equally in both domains. And the startup arena was the only place where I saw the client/producer completely flip flop on how a feature should be designed multiple times in a single week, based on whatever article they read or dream they had the night before, and then get all pissed why I wasn't already halfway done with their brand new vision they just told me two minutes ago. It can go both ways. At least the enterprise apps had a mechanism where the users could provide feedback, and had a definite audience and need that needed fulfilled.
- jakub_g 11y ago> The root problem with enterprise is that products are often built to artificial specifications that someone made up, not to actual specifications learned through real use and feedback or that are shaped by underlying reality. Sounds familiar. The previous app I worked on was so flexible and customizable via parameters, that in fact half of the bugs we've had were due to crappy configuration management process rather than actual code bugs.