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So, HP, What Exactly Are You Trying To Sell Us?
billtom writes "There's an article over at c|net news where the normally fawning technology business press actually takes an HP VP to task for the extremely vague statements that usually surround enterprise software 'products.' With some gems like 'That could be boilerplate applying to any company,' and 'But again, how does that differ from what's been around?' and 'But hasn't that always been the goal?'" I'd like to see Charles Cooper interview whoever came up with .Net, too.
He must have gone to college with this consultant.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
... 'cause I did, and now suffer from severe buzzword poisoning.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
Disclaimer: I was recently laid off as my position was outsourced to HP.
First, I don't think that the VP ever really answered the questions that were asked. I think the whole point behind trying to sell the Adaptive Enterprise is that it is not something you can clearly define. I'd hate to actually do contract negotiations with them as I'm sure both parties will have different thoughts on what is covered under HP services.
The whole line about being able to dynamically restructure your IT resources to me means HP can help you figure out how to axe 1/3rd of your workforce and still "adapt" to your business needs. As the interviewer pointed out, aligning IT with your business it nothing new. Hiring outside consultants to help do it is nothing new.
It begs the question, what is new about adaptive enterprise? Answer: Nothing. I don't see any proof that it is anything more than another marketing strategy designed to sell billable hours and support/consulting contracts.
The utility computing aspects of the 'adaptive enterprise' are quite real and you can buy it today in the form of the HP Utility Data Center. In a word, UDC is about infrastructure automation - a data center in which you can rapidly deploy (and redeploy) servers and services with no hands-on work, and not requiring you to have a huge, specialized support staff.
To really have an adaptive enterprise, you need more things layered on top of infrastructure automation, but it is a key building block. Other vendors like Sun and IBM are selling this type of concept, but I think you'll find that HP has more actual products than the competition. HP's marketing does stink though.
Instead of all of this unintelligble claptrap, HP needs to devote a decent amount of concentration to their Enterprise systems division, and make some hard choices.
HP is no longer saying "bet the company" on Itanium, but currently HP-UX and VMS are totally wagered on Intel's unproven architecture.
The Alpha base has been easy pickings for Solaris and Linux, and the rest of the HP Enterprise customer base is watching as HP "burns the boats" and our systems investments vaporize.
I realize that HP believes it has sound reasons for sending PA-RISC and Alpha to sleep with the fishes, but there is currently no backup for these OS environments if Itanium fails (which looks likely).
You can't bring back the dead, but HP needs to immediately and publicly port HP-UX and VMS to the AMD Opteron, and let the customers determine which architecture will survive.
HP has been willing to engage AMD in the PC market for mostly no good purpose (the margins on these products are razor thin). If HP has braved Intel's wrath for this useless gesture, then HP should take a risk that really counts and let the market decide the fate of Itanium vs. Opteron.
HP, the choice is yours, adapt or die.
So now the word "platform" is a buzzword?
The .NET platform includes not only the CLR, but the various servies that are used frequently by .NET like IIS, MSMQ, SQL Server, and even COM+ through Enterprise Services. These are the technologies that work very well with the .NET CLR to create distributed applications (oh no, another buzzword right?)
What do you mean by "graphics card applet" exactly? Programming certain types of applications using the .NET Framework/Platform/Whatever is not a good idea. I don't pretend that .NET is the cure-all for everything. However, for creating business process type applications, it really is a great platform to work with.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
It did get slightly out of control, but calling .NET simply a "java-ish wrapper around the win32 API" is fairly inaccurate. Many of the class libraries do simply wrap the Win32 api, especially things like Windows Forms, but this is only a stopgap measure until the support is built into the OS.
Also, .NET support is being built into more products like SQLServer. The ability to create stored procs in any .NET compliant language is coming soon (Yes, I know you can write stored procs in Java in DB2 and Oracle), along with other features.
So .NET is a lot more than just the CLR and VS.NET. It is seeping into just about every Microsoft product there is. I think the marketing just came too early.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
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