6 ms·

In enterprise IT, we have 2 kinds of vendors, those we actively embrace and those who hold us hostage. The biggest fear in making any major IT purchase is not

by edw519 17y ago

In enterprise IT, we have 2 kinds of vendors, those we actively embrace and those who hold us hostage. The biggest fear in making any major IT purchase is not the price, the conversion, or the change in culture; it's the potential loss of options in how we run our own business. I've seen it over and over again: competitive pressure requires us to make a change in the way we run our business, but we can't. For all kinds of reasons. The license agreement kills any possible ROI. We don't have the needed IT support because so much of it is spent on keeping current. The systems don't talk to each other. The feature we need is still 18 months away. And probably most of all, the software is not as excellent as we need it to be (let's just leave it at that). Long gone are the days when you needed IBM's permission to fart. Guess who the biggest culprit is today? Just because you go with someone doesn't necessarily mean you like it. Almost every enterprise IT department I know would love an alternative to Microsoft. (And make no mistake about it, the enterprise is Microsoft's strength, much more so than the consumer.) Sure, pissing off your customers may pad today's bottom line. How do you think those customers will feel when your landscape changes and they have more choices? [Entered using ie7 on xp pro. I didn't have a choice.]

lispm 17y ago
I'm with you on that. I think it hurts the companies a lot. I did consulting for a company which was hostage of Windows NT for many years, old Internet Explorer's and so on. On TV and in print the company advertised themselves as young, innovative, communicative - if you actually worked there, much of that was really the opposite. If the employee gets greeted by a gray office, a gray desk, a gray PC and a gray user interface, then it will be clear that the company does not live the values it communicates to the outside. So the plain gray PC with the interface that is either gray or childish has found its home in the enterprise. The computer is like it is, because the reality in many enterprise is not 'human' at all and Microsoft contributed to it and made its profit from it (because the companies choose their equipment, not only the computer, based on price mostly).
DenisM 17y ago
So Microsoft is preventing you from buying copy of Windows 7 and installing Firefox? No? Your anger is misplaced then, should be angry with your IT department that doesn't let you upgrade form a 9 year old OS.
- dualogy 17y ago
  An MS-based "Enterprise IT" is more than that, much more. It's not about the Windows client version and choice of browser. They'll have heavily integrated server products (all of them, multiple instances), sometimes for good reason and sometimes not. SQL Server, ISA, "Office Communication Server", "Team Foundation Server", SharePoint Server, Active Directory Services, etc. pp. you name it, ad infinitum. All with the appropriate, sometimes buggy GUI tools, and the much-needed, sometimes buggy, 3rd-party add-ons and tools. Often this ends up as a big mess, and while the products have certainly matured over a decade and thousands of developers working on them, a decade and 1000s of devs can also introduce many new flaws with each update. In the end, it's a big pile of mediocrity and un-agility, and yes, despite that "deciders" often buy into it because-nobody-ever-got-fired-for-etc. Of course, this will not go on forever...
  - actf 17y ago
    > Often this ends up as a big mess Care to give us a concrete example? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point here, but my experience has been somewhat the opposite. The tight integration of the Microsoft development tools (for example Visual Studio, SQL Server) is what makes it such an appealing and easy to use development platform for so many enterprise developers. > a decade and 1000s of devs can also introduce many new flaws with each update. I find that silly - what are you basing that argument on other than anecdotal evidence? Using that same logic you'd expect linux to be extremely flawed since so many developer's hands touch it.
    - dualogy 17y ago
      Sure, the integration of dev tools is pretty slick and appealing. But I wasn't talking about VS at all, but about all the various servers and how they are typically deployed in the Enterprise. You're right about the "anecdotal evidence", but I just experience that anecdotal evidence every other day and there's a lot more of that anecdotal evidence to be found in most IT depts and MS shops.

by edw519 17y ago

lispm 17y ago

I'm with you on that. I think it hurts the companies a lot. I did consulting for a company which was hostage of Windows NT for many years, old Internet Explorer's and so on. On TV and in print the company advertised themselves as young, innovative, communicative - if you actually worked there, much of that was really the opposite. If the employee gets greeted by a gray office, a gray desk, a gray PC and a gray user interface, then it will be clear that the company does not live the values it communicates to the outside. So the plain gray PC with the interface that is either gray or childish has found its home in the enterprise. The computer is like it is, because the reality in many enterprise is not 'human' at all and Microsoft contributed to it and made its profit from it (because the companies choose their equipment, not only the computer, based on price mostly).

DenisM 17y ago

So Microsoft is preventing you from buying copy of Windows 7 and installing Firefox? No? Your anger is misplaced then, should be angry with your IT department that doesn't let you upgrade form a 9 year old OS.

dualogy 17y ago
An MS-based "Enterprise IT" is more than that, much more. It's not about the Windows client version and choice of browser. They'll have heavily integrated server products (all of them, multiple instances), sometimes for good reason and sometimes not. SQL Server, ISA, "Office Communication Server", "Team Foundation Server", SharePoint Server, Active Directory Services, etc. pp. you name it, ad infinitum. All with the appropriate, sometimes buggy GUI tools, and the much-needed, sometimes buggy, 3rd-party add-ons and tools. Often this ends up as a big mess, and while the products have certainly matured over a decade and thousands of developers working on them, a decade and 1000s of devs can also introduce many new flaws with each update. In the end, it's a big pile of mediocrity and un-agility, and yes, despite that "deciders" often buy into it because-nobody-ever-got-fired-for-etc. Of course, this will not go on forever...
- actf 17y ago
  > Often this ends up as a big mess Care to give us a concrete example? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point here, but my experience has been somewhat the opposite. The tight integration of the Microsoft development tools (for example Visual Studio, SQL Server) is what makes it such an appealing and easy to use development platform for so many enterprise developers. > a decade and 1000s of devs can also introduce many new flaws with each update. I find that silly - what are you basing that argument on other than anecdotal evidence? Using that same logic you'd expect linux to be extremely flawed since so many developer's hands touch it.
  - dualogy 17y ago
    Sure, the integration of dev tools is pretty slick and appealing. But I wasn't talking about VS at all, but about all the various servers and how they are typically deployed in the Enterprise. You're right about the "anecdotal evidence", but I just experience that anecdotal evidence every other day and there's a lot more of that anecdotal evidence to be found in most IT depts and MS shops.