Scalable Enterprise Buzzword Solutions

prostoalex writes "Need a scalable enterprise solution? You're in luck, as those three buzzwords have become so prominent in the technology industry, that they can describe pretty much anything, according to Associated Press. The article later goes on to blame Microsoft and Apple for 'dumbing down' the product descriptions in order to appeal to non-tech-savvy audiences. 'High-tech companies don't release products anymore, they provide solutions. And those solutions don't simply run a program or play a song. Instead, they enable experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive', the AP article states."

Comments

Don't blame this on Microsoft

[Dancin_Santa]

This is the work of IBM and the rest of the "services" oriented consultants. KPMG, Anderson, etc. A group of highly paid morons.

But in the long run, services is actually the driving force in computing. Products are fine, but upon those products is a whole ecology of companies providing support, enhancement, and integration of those products, tailored for each individual company.

In fact, this is what makes Open Source software so attractive. It sure as hell isn't good to be the company developing the software, but it is really good to be a service provider using that software. No longer do you need to pay for the software, you only need to pay for support.

I guess this could be a double edged sword for customers, though. It seems that there would be an incentive to keep OSS as obtuse and inscrutable as possible to maximize support income. This obviously wouldn't happen with a commercial product that has to prove its worth by being easier to use and generally better than the equivalent OSS package, just to compete.

Re:Don't blame this on Microsoft

[ScentCone]

This is the work of IBM and the rest of the "services" oriented consultants. KPMG, Anderson, etc. A group of highly paid morons.

Well, as one of those ... um, morons ... I can tell you that the folks you really want to blame are the folks who actually buy the IT and use it. If they had serious IT talent in house, or had their other process/business experts actually working with those folks - they wouldn't need all of us moronic consultants. Of course, the people who need their IT problems solved (um... hence the term "solution"), rarely have the clout to cause the in-house IT shop to be expanded, and even if they could, they'd chop those people right back off once most of the heavy lifting was done.

Anyway, as long as decent-sized firms need business problems solved with IT, somebody will have to do the work. To the extent that no in-house IT shop can keep the place running and handle large implementations of new tools, software, data, infrastructure... it's us morons to the rescue. And we have to live gig to gig, which means we're not getting paid for 40 solid hours of work every week of the year. We have to spend time finding new work, doing paperwork, and other things that make our actual customer-facing time as expensive as it is.

Incidentally, we don't use the term "solution" when we're talking about Excel or Word (well, not usually). That language comes out in the context of larger scale (and "scalable," yes) things we bolt together out of the higher-end products.

Now, I can't comment on which came first (IT's use of the term, vs what follows), but if you talk to the other operations people in a large company, you'll hear about "waste management solutions," "marketing solutions," "entryway security solutions," "fire supression solutions," and so on. Don't succumb to slashdot tunnel vision on this one!

So what

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Engineers don't have the money and don't make the buying decisions, so there is no need to wrap products up in geek-appeal.

To sell anything, you have to pitch the product to the person with the signing power. If your target customers are six year old girls you paint it pink and sparkly. If your target customer is a CEO/CIO + board of directors then you dress it up with buzzwords and phrases. Technical details are stuff these folk don't understand add confusion.

Just an old dog not wanting to learn new jargon...

[Jace of Fuse!]

After reading the article, I'd say he's basically bashing new jargon because he doesn't see a need for it.

I would say most of what he sites is pretty silly, but "Scalable?"

I can't think of a better word to describe something as highly functional as scalable, even if sometimes it applies to things it really shouldn't matter for.

But we'll take for instance a simple peer to peer file sharing network. Some file sharing networks simply don't scale well to thousands of users, or hundreds of thousands but work really well for a few dozen. So knowing weather or not something like this is scalable enough to demonstrate to a small office, then deploy company wide. Knowing something like that REALLY WILL save you some heartache later one.

Or how about rendering engines? Some scale DOWN as well as up. A good scalalbe engine means software will drop features on low end hardware, and take advantage of more on newer hardware.

Some jargon is useful.

But others are just annoying. I still hate the term "BLOG". We already has sufficient terms to describe most post and forum sites, but the term BLOG implies a specific type and now sites that aren't really blogs are being called blogs by the internet newcomers who don't know any better.

So ... uh... blah.

Whiney bitch

[kevlar]

That guy is a whiney bitch. His examples are totally bogus.

Enterprise = Anything dealing with corporations
Scalable = Anything that can support growth
Blog = Web Log. Its a fucking diary.

I was expecting to see shit like "Synergy", but "Data Migration"?!? How the hell can you be in the IT industry and not understand Data Migration?

What a douche bag!

Obfuscational Rhetoric

[WeirdKid]

We've been making fun of this for years. My pet peeve of the moment is the over-use of slightly ambiguous statements followed by "from a this-or-that perspective".

Example: Instead of saying "What is your schedule?" I get: "What is your timeline, from a scheduling perspective?"

Or, instead of "How is the project going?", I get: "How are things going, from a project perspective?"

I swear to God that the people I work with can't form a sentence without this. It drives me nuts. That, and people who say "processees". Fucking ignorant.