3 ms·

It very well could be. I think where MSFT gets mixed up is that they are obsessed with their products being able to solve everyone's use-case. Which means if

by ajcp 5y ago

It very well could be. I think where MSFT gets mixed up is that they are obsessed with their products being able to solve *everyone's* use-case. Which means if they're talking to the business then it's a friendly "Low-Code" platform that any citizen developer can use. However, when they're talking to IT it's an amazing CI/CD tool for developing powerful enterprise applications! What's something that corporate IT is obsessed with? Making sure the business isn't creating shadow IT and developing enterprise applications.

jrochkind1 5y ago
MSFT is just doing so well at getting "enterprise" lock-in, that I'm reluctant to conclude they are getting anything at all "mixed up" in their messaging to decision-makers. At present they seem to be doing it exactly right for their business goals. I have worked at and know of so many place that are "no, you can't spend money on that product, you have to use the equivalent from MSFT that is already included in our deal." Which is one reason it might be in MSFT's benefit to convince you that their thing is in the same class as some other thing you could spend money on, or may already be spending money on. And also, yeah, they are indeed convincing decision-makerse that they meet everyone's use-case and is whatever you want it to be, it's working....
- ajcp 5y ago
  I agree. I think that's also true of all the cloud players these days honestly.
- 7952 5y ago
  I work in an enterprise and use flow and other Power platform stuff. The sense I get is that management look at the headline features and see it as essentially safe. But Microsoft have included some features that will be exploited in unexpected ways that create a maintenance and security problem. A good example is that Flow/Power Automate can be triggered using an API end point. That can then be configured to provide a http response (including headers). It makes it super easy to setup APIs that have no security and expose corporate data. I think the Power platform is like a modern Excel. Simple and inoffensive at first glance. But full of features that let unskilled users do risky things that will quickly become business critical. But the convergence of Office 365, SharePoint, Flow, PowerBI and dynamics is unstoppable.
  - russdpale 5y ago
    Ah yes, the one spread sheet that everyone uses but no one knows how it works! I've seen that so many times.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zerkten 5y ago
    > But full of features that let unskilled users do risky things that will quickly become business critical. Isn't the answer the same as it has always been? That is, maintain a relationship with the business where you are trusted. When IT and the business units trust each other (to some extent) then you see better feedback cycles. This is an infrequent occurrence because of the attitudes of IT. When trust exists, the business areas will share information on their apps and partake in exercises to properly productionize apps. IT break trust in multiple ways often simultaneously. They try to stamp out apps without giving the business an interim solution, fail to communicate well, implement security policies which aren't grounded in good practice, etc. These are just a litany of missteps that you have to unravel when you are asked to recover situations like these.
WorldMaker 5y ago
> What's something that corporate IT is obsessed with? Making sure the business isn't creating shadow IT and developing enterprise applications. Though with Power Apps and Power BI all of that starts showing up on IT's dashboards (Azure Portal; Microsoft 365). Microsoft hasn't been great about messaging that, but unlike hidden Excel files in random network shares or VB+Access apps in PCs in cupboards, that "amazing CI/CD tool for enterprise applications" also means that it can't just live in the shadows and will get seen by IT. If anything, I've seen "citizen developers" turn away from Power BI/Power Apps precisely because their M365/Azure admins are too micro-managing to use the tools for what they were intended for and such people just go back to that Excel+VBA macros on a network share in a broom closet. Which yes, gets back to Microsoft is trying too hard to meet everyone's use case and in forcing Power BI/Power Apps into M365/Azure they've trapped out some of the "I just need to get stuff done" "citizen devs" because some IT departments are so scared of shadows that they are preemptively blocking one of the tools they could use to keep an eye on it better. It's a lovely irony.
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  > I've seen "citizen developers" turn away from Power BI/Power Apps precisely because their M365/Azure admins are too micro-managing I've been on both sides of the IT gatekeeping story, and enjoy the irony that we've gone full circle from the mass exodus of business users to SaaS to circumvent gatekeeping only for the success of those tools to introduce centralized management to appeal to more IT organizations.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Deleted a comment above where I posted exactly what WorldMaker said. Agree 100%! IMHO, the key is change control. Programmatic change control (and CI/CD when more evolved) should be an organizational tool, not an IT tool. "We found a user doing wrong" should be an opportunity to ask "What would this user need to do it right?" rather than simply telling them no. Because oftentimes they literally can't do things "IT-correct" (because of permissions, job title, org location, etc). It seems maladaptive to blame users for not using tools & processes they haven't been allowed to have.

It very well could be. I think where MSFT gets mixed up is that they are obsessed with their products being able to solve *everyone's* use-case. Which means if

by ajcp 5y ago

jrochkind1 5y ago

MSFT is just doing so well at getting "enterprise" lock-in, that I'm reluctant to conclude they are getting anything at all "mixed up" in their messaging to decision-makers. At present they seem to be doing it exactly right for their business goals. I have worked at and know of so many place that are "no, you can't spend money on that product, you have to use the equivalent from MSFT that is already included in our deal." Which is one reason it might be in MSFT's benefit to convince you that their thing is in the same class as some other thing you could spend money on, or may already be spending money on. And also, yeah, they are indeed convincing decision-makerse that they meet everyone's use-case and is whatever you want it to be, it's working....

ajcp 5y ago
I agree. I think that's also true of all the cloud players these days honestly.
7952 5y ago
I work in an enterprise and use flow and other Power platform stuff. The sense I get is that management look at the headline features and see it as essentially safe. But Microsoft have included some features that will be exploited in unexpected ways that create a maintenance and security problem. A good example is that Flow/Power Automate can be triggered using an API end point. That can then be configured to provide a http response (including headers). It makes it super easy to setup APIs that have no security and expose corporate data. I think the Power platform is like a modern Excel. Simple and inoffensive at first glance. But full of features that let unskilled users do risky things that will quickly become business critical. But the convergence of Office 365, SharePoint, Flow, PowerBI and dynamics is unstoppable.
- russdpale 5y ago
  Ah yes, the one spread sheet that everyone uses but no one knows how it works! I've seen that so many times.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zerkten 5y ago
  > But full of features that let unskilled users do risky things that will quickly become business critical. Isn't the answer the same as it has always been? That is, maintain a relationship with the business where you are trusted. When IT and the business units trust each other (to some extent) then you see better feedback cycles. This is an infrequent occurrence because of the attitudes of IT. When trust exists, the business areas will share information on their apps and partake in exercises to properly productionize apps. IT break trust in multiple ways often simultaneously. They try to stamp out apps without giving the business an interim solution, fail to communicate well, implement security policies which aren't grounded in good practice, etc. These are just a litany of missteps that you have to unravel when you are asked to recover situations like these.

WorldMaker 5y ago

> What's something that corporate IT is obsessed with? Making sure the business isn't creating shadow IT and developing enterprise applications. Though with Power Apps and Power BI all of that starts showing up on IT's dashboards (Azure Portal; Microsoft 365). Microsoft hasn't been great about messaging that, but unlike hidden Excel files in random network shares or VB+Access apps in PCs in cupboards, that "amazing CI/CD tool for enterprise applications" also means that it can't just live in the shadows and will get seen by IT. If anything, I've seen "citizen developers" turn away from Power BI/Power Apps precisely because their M365/Azure admins are too micro-managing to use the tools for what they were intended for and such people just go back to that Excel+VBA macros on a network share in a broom closet. Which yes, gets back to Microsoft is trying too hard to meet everyone's use case and in forcing Power BI/Power Apps into M365/Azure they've trapped out some of the "I just need to get stuff done" "citizen devs" because some IT departments are so scared of shadows that they are preemptively blocking one of the tools they could use to keep an eye on it better. It's a lovely irony.

tomnipotent 5y ago
> I've seen "citizen developers" turn away from Power BI/Power Apps precisely because their M365/Azure admins are too micro-managing I've been on both sides of the IT gatekeeping story, and enjoy the irony that we've gone full circle from the mass exodus of business users to SaaS to circumvent gatekeeping only for the success of those tools to introduce centralized management to appeal to more IT organizations.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Deleted a comment above where I posted exactly what WorldMaker said. Agree 100%! IMHO, the key is change control. Programmatic change control (and CI/CD when more evolved) should be an organizational tool, not an IT tool. "We found a user doing wrong" should be an opportunity to ask "What would this user need to do it right?" rather than simply telling them no. Because oftentimes they literally can't do things "IT-correct" (because of permissions, job title, org location, etc). It seems maladaptive to blame users for not using tools & processes they haven't been allowed to have.