Enterprise Software Strategy - issues and viewpoints

A collection of papers and brief articles of interest to all involved in large-scale software in the enterprise.

For the full text of any article, click on the title.

The expectation gap and how to bridge it

Many software solutions for large businesses are sold primarily to business people on the basis of their current and promised future functionality. When real-life experience falls short of the promise, it's the internal IT organisation which gets the blame, and the task of making it work. This paper discusses the reasons for this common scenario, and how organisations can educate themselves in making these important decisions. For the full text of the article, please click .

Facing the contradiction

All large organisations have IT policies designed to ensure the stability of the environment while still encouraging innovation and rapid response. Sadly, very few organisations face squarely up to the contradictions inherent in achieving both flexibility and stability. The result is often an official position which reads well but is widely circumvented in practice. The consequence is a lot of effort is put into realising none of the real objectives well.

Open Source benefits and pitfalls

These days nobody can ignore open source software, and few would want to. But when it it a compelling alternative to more expensively licensed alternatives, and when it it a dangerous distraction which will defocus your technology team and suck attention from the real issues? This article presents a personal view.

A manifesto for purchasers of Enterprise Software

Customers of enterprise software, throw off your shackles. The time has come to demand that what is sold as enterprise software should actually work as intended in the enterprise. Far too much of the effort firms devote to deploying and operating Enterprise Software consists of working round limitations in the enterprise readiness of the product. But we can hardly demand change if we don't first explain what we need. This paper is a first step in this vital direction, and a call to action.

Old software never dies....

The benefits of eliminating old versions or obsolete products are obvious to senior management, but somehow, actually turning things off is much harder than you might think.