Enterprise 2.0 Software - the Impotence of Being Earnest

The curtain rises on a debate going on about whether the software for Enterprise 2.0 has to be the same dire stuff we have seen for the last 30 years.

Enter Mr Scoble, stage left, who notes that a certain Mr Gates complained that bloggers don't talk about Enterprise software:

Now, what’s going to get more of you interested? Consumer software that you actually have a role in adopting or purchasing or enterprise software where some CIO somewhere else in your organization decides on? I know that when I talk about enterprise software the numbers of viewers just don’t show up. So, tech bloggers quickly learn that if they talk about enterprise software they aren’t going to get many advertising impressions.

Then Mr Krigsman enters stage right and says Mr Scoble is just a gadfly and thus not a Serious Person, and Enterprise software is for Serious Business People:

Enterprise software is all about helping organizations conduct their basic business in a better, more cost-effective manner. In software jargon, it’s intended to “enable core business processes” with a high degree of reliability, security, scalability, and so on. These aren’t sexy, cool attributes, but are absolutely essential to the smooth running of businesses, organizations, and governments around the world.

Recently, I asked someone from SAP, “What percentage of the world’s economy runs through your systems every day?” While he didn’t offer specific figures, we both agreed the number must be significant. That fact alone makes enterprise products fundamentally different from consumer software, where ease of use and simplicity are paramount.

Hmm...I wonder how much of the world's economy runs through consumer websites and Google?

Anyway - to this, Mr Carr, descending from his Ivory Tower, argues that there is no reason why the turgid enterprise software of the past needs to be repeated unto future generations:

I'm sorry, but I think Krigsman is the one who doesn't understand enterprise software - or at least doesn't understand what it could become. The distinction he draws between business and consumer applications is specious. Are we really to believe that making software engaging is somehow incompatible with making it reliable and secure? That's just baloney.

To which Mr Krigsman retorts (loud-o-voce) that:

Since enterprise developers don’t deliberately set out to create hard-to-use applications, there must be reasons why this happens. Simply complaining and waving a magic wand, as Nick seems inclined to do, decreeing that “Ye shall make thy software better” hardly seems like a practical approach to solving the problem.

(Noises Off - a lot of Harrumphing by the Great and Good , who contribute Worthy Sounding Notes to the Debate)

Strewth - how many of these people have actually had to implement or run a large scale enterprise system?

OK, some thoughts.

Firstly, anybody who is trying to defend yesterdays' enterprise software as a Good Example needs to be shot at dawn - most of the stuff is dire, and was written by people who had no interest / budget / experience of making it user friendly (and I should know, was cutting my teeth on MRP 2 etc systems before the Web 2.0 kids were out of nappies - and have no desire to perpetuate that stuff). The design objective was too often hitting RFP ticklists, not usability / maintainability / cost of ownership etc.

Secondly, we need to differentiate between the Back End stuff, which only the Tech staff see, and the front end which the users.....Use. Daily. All the time. Why can't this User Facing stuff be delightful to use?

Thirdly, all the stuff about security / reliability / etc has got sweet FA to do with highly effective usability - totally different things - please stop confusing them. You can have highly reliable, highly secure and great to use systems. It is simply a choice of how you set up profiles etc in the systems, and most enterprise software providers are criminally lazy / cheapskate / vogon-like in this regard. There are some very secure customer facing systems (e.g. triple play provisioning) which would be booted out of court if they were hard to use at the user front end. All it takes is willpower and a smattering of empathy.

Fourthly, and very bluntly, employees and small companies are increasingly taking matters into their own hands - one of the benefits of the whole Webservice / Web 2.0 movement is, like the PC a generation ago, the User is starting to get back in control.

Fifthly, Open Source increasingly means that you can build very powerful back ends quickly, reliably and - strangely enough - they are more stable / usable / secure than a lot of Enterprise software. That gives you more budget to make better front ends.

Let us be very clear here with the megatrend - in the last decade or so there has been a flip flop - once upon a time, software was developed in Enterprises and rolled out to Users. For the last 7 or so years its being developed for (and by) Users and increasingly being taken in by Enterprises. Most of the the real innovation today is on Webservice / SaaS user facing software, thats why there is so much blogging about it.

Another big trend of 2008 - the encirclement of monolithic Last Generation software platforms by friendlier, easier to use, more flexible Enterprise 2.0 software.

Addendum - Joel Spolsky offer a good summary of the economics behind the reason so much enterprise software is crap (tip of hat to Phil Jones for link)