Monthly Archives: February 2006

Notes on IT Labor

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  • You can rarely pick the people on your team, or pick those that your team must work with and depend on. “If we had all the right people, of course all the right things would happen.”
  • Putting people in one big room is a defensive move against the above. Open source software is developed by geographically dispersed groups (the word “team” is even too strong to use). Sales is driven by geographically dispersed, ad hoc teams.
  • Theory: we haven’t figured out how to do software in business, on a large scale. It may be done, but it’s not normal, or thought of as “good” (by programmers at least).
  • Theory: worse, we haven’t come up with re-usable ways to solve the people problems associated with not being face to face. We expect our geographically developers to work as well as open source developers, but it hasn’t worked out yet on a large scale.
  • Given all that, your best bet is one big room.
  • Is it true that technical skill is disappearing in the US? MSFT and others are always saying “we have to hire globally because those in North America who’re smart enough aren’t plentiful enough.” Is business skill is suffering the same thing? What skills do we have in North America?

Enterprise Software vs. Consumer Software

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Stuck in 'Bama!

I’m here in Montgomery, Alabama on the air-strip. Our jetBlue flight (Austin to JFK) had an “unexpected” landing because of some computer problems. Exciting! I hear some Pizza Hut pizza is on the way: “we ordered 20 different pizzas.” And soon, we’ll be on another airplane up to NYC…yeah…in 4 hours.

While waiting — watching some Marine fighter jets (F-16s?) take off, interestingly enough — I started thinking about enterprise software. I’m the guy who read
Crossing the Chasm on the beach during our honeymoon, so what do you expect?

What is Enterprise Software?

While I enjoy a good snark-fest about “Enterprise Software,” the reality is that there is enterprise software and it does have meaning to people. Granted, it has meaning in the same way that the phrase “being American” has meaning: it’s not clear and concise, and the “definition” definitely isn’t the same across different groups, or even intra-groups.

Aspects of Enterprise Software

Here’s the list so far (it’s not ranked, in order, etc.):

  • “Controlled collaboration.”
  • Can 1 person be an “enterprise”?
  • People working together.
  • Controlling the public face/external interface.
  • Executing to plan.
  • Authority. Access. Authentication. Authorization.
  • Uptime. Error-free. Transactional.
  • Money. Profit. Relationship (with customer).
  • Longevity. Growth. Investment. ROI.
  • Careers. Employee. Boss. CEO. Board.
  • Work with other software.
  • Change and adapt to new business models.
  • Cost little.
  • Marketing: good PR from using the software.
  • Knowledge transferable: users can be treated as cogs/easily replaceable/switch outable.
  • Scales.
  • Support from vendor: problems can be resolved or worked around quickly (less than 24 hours).
  • Works with your hardware.
  • Can be upgraded without loosing data, configuration, or needed functionality.
  • Can move to other hardware.
  • Usable by non-technical people.
  • Keeps data and info in the desired walled-gardens. Prevent leaks.
  • Does not help competition.
  • Multi-user.
  • Direct-sales.
  • Fewer customers.
  • Conforms to law, rules and regulations, compliance.
  • Reports, statistics, and dashboards.
  • Hierarchical thinking.

    • Consumer Software

    Of course, the above makes you start thinking “what’s the opposite of enterprise software?” Consumer software:

  • Desktop.
  • 1 user. No Login. Open access.
  • Install.
  • Never upgrade.
  • Same hardware forever.
  • Download everything and anything.
  • Parental control. V-Chip, AOL, Earthlink.
  • DRM.
  • …the customer’s activities and feature set are controlled and dictated by the vendor instead of the customer controlling and dictating to the vendor.
  • High volume sales. Retail.
  • Email, word processing, IM, web browsing, party planning, article/blog/etc. reading, movies.
  • Law keeping/legal behavior not important.
  • Programatic enforcement of law “nonexistent.” (Except DRM.)
  • No historic reporting, reports, etc. needed.
  • Customers have no organized “this is what we want” voice
    • Consumers take what they’re given.
    • Small/growing DIY trend that counters the above. How big is the DIY/Make generation/user base?
  • (Recent/new) span multiple devices.

Cellphone Pricing

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I think everyone knows that cellphone and telco pricing is crazy. Here’s a good story of it being so.

I recently broke my phone — I “dropped” it and it broke in half. I’ve only had my phone for about 6 months, so I don’t qualify for any “upgrade” promotions. And, I don’t have the $5/month insurance. Consequently, I’ll have to buy a new phone.

Buying a phone at “retail price” (without discounters for new sign-up promotions) is quite expensive: $100-500. And the low end is the crap-phone that doesn’t have any features.

Pay More and Lock Yourself in Firmer!

My carrier offered a “deal” for the same model phone I have (a Motorola v265) if extended my contract. The price: $219…plus locking myself for another six months.

So, this all got me thinking, “how can I get me one of those RAZRs?” If I paid “retail price,” it’d be about $420. I have a friend in the wireless business, and he could get me one for around $300.

If I could get a promotional rate, I could probably get one for free.

Goodbye…?

Which begs the question, how much does it cost to get out of my contract? It’s a mere $175.

The equation is then: $175 for a great phone, or $219 for the same phone I had…. I mean…don’t they have people working on preventing this kind of situation? Or, at least, some data-analysis scripts? How do you price yourself into that kind of absurd, loosing position?

Of course, once we get into the “cancel dance” with them, who knows what they’ll throw at me. The exit-price is set pretty low for now, though: $175. I don’t mind “spending” all the hassle time just to stick it to a telco: as a consumer who’s paid years and years of weird line-item charges that make no sense, gotten spotty wireless service, and crippled phones, there’s no love lost in that relationship.

DrunkAndRetired.com Podcast Interview in OnJava

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As I mentioned last week, Chris Adamson of O’Reilly’s OnJava interviewed Charles and I about the podcast. We’re in the second part of the “The Java Podcasters” series, which is now available.

We answer some questions about how the podcast started, what we think makes a good podcast, and some other inside baseball.

Like I said last week, Chris seemed like a cool dude: check out his comments on Resident Evil.

The series is also going to be used to seed content into one of O’Reilly’s podcasts, Distributing the Future, so we’ll post a link to that when it comes up.