When a company makes great claims, it's a natural reaction to want to see those claims proven. Today we were discussing a press release from IBM which talked about a 'new category of business intelligence' and made reference to 'hyper-intelligence'.
I can take a little hyperbole, but it has to be backed up by something tangible. If you're going to make claims let's see something in action. Get it centre stage. Ship it. Put it out there on the internet for us all to use to its fullest and give feedback on.
Of course, in the world of enterprise software most vendors can't, don't and won't.
They can't because they're scared; of exposing their ideas to the market, of what users and commentators will say, of the fact that these much-vaunted products don't actually do anything new. Even if there was a genuinely good product, a live, public platform would need sign off from so many different levels of hierarchy that a public site that really flexes its muscles is never going to happen. Large enterprise software vendors are just not agile enough.
They don't because they don't think they need to win your business; they think they've already won it just by being who they are. Their FUD strategy is so institutionalised even they believe it. Why should they risk their reputation by actually putting a live version of their solution out there, in the public domain? They don't need to...so...
They won't because there's too much to lose. They know that under the microscope their key value propositions break down, that the total cost of ownership for a big vendor solution is a big number; that if you went to a smaller vendor with a similar budget you'd get an awesome solution, not an awful one. (Or at least a useable one, eh, SAP users?). Under the microscope relying on FUD is unsustainable, as numerous dictators have found.
But times are changing. Users want to engage honestly and are willing to engage immediately. So if it works, ship it. Get it on the cloud so users can honestly evaluate it.
If the big enterprise vendors don't, their agile competitors surely will.
