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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."
Apple would never do that, not with Xserves*
* Do not eat Xserve.
Dilbert-inspired: The Buzzword Generator
Yet Another Buzzword Generator
And there are many, many more buzzword generators out there, implemented using open-architected dynamic algorithms by organic radical policies...
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
was the world's first "solutions" company. The big-iron dinosaurs -- the DECs, the Amdahls, the Univacs -- were all talking about "solutions" long before Microsoft and Apple.
All in all, a stupid article from a moron too lazy to do any research.
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.
Nice to see an article that thinks outside the box into new paradigms and synergies.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
When I hear these buzz words I immediately assume that whatever the hell they are selling is not as good as the words may lead you to think. They're saying something but they are hiding something. Damned weasels.
Give me benchmarks! Give me comparisons!
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have to "interface" with the AdExecs on a regular basis at work, and they are so god damn annoying. Always sitting around "doing lunch" whilst creating "PowerPoints" to present to the upper-echelons of management, showing how they have "factored-in" their latest and greatest "thinking outside-of-the-box".
Makes me so enraged I want to throw up and shoot them at the same time. Grrr.
I guess what really pisses me off is the fact that they get paid to do the same basic job I do. Bullshit the bosses ;)
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Advertisers and corporate relations departments produce bullshit... film at 11.
After reading the article, I'd say he's basically bashing new jargon because he doesn't see a need for it.
... uh... blah.
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
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
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!
Buzzword Translation
-------- -----------
Adaptable Product not yet coded.
Scalable Not scalable.
Best-of-Breed As good as other vaporware.
Zero-maintenance Zero-utility.
Open Works with anything - just not with your systems.
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(If you read this post very carefully, you'll notice that if you remove all the buzzwords, what remains is hogwash. Literally.)
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
> without being sued... er... litigated against.
Don't you mean "without other companies leveraging their intellectual property at our expense" ?
The unofficial
I remember an advertisement selling "Your Problem - Our Solution" about 20 years ago. It was so abundant and the words "Your problem" and "Our solution" were aligned somewhat strange in the design, so we were always forced to read "Our Solution - Your Problem".
I read his book a few months ago. He talks of the death of public language, how it has been pervaded by words and phrases that have no real power or truth - dead language.
To quote from the following article Fighting the Death Sentence
"To provide outcome-related research and consultancy services that address real-world issues" - shrieks of laughter. The university's "approach to quality management is underpinned by a strong commitment to continuous improvement and a whole-of-organisation framework" - uproar in the room. The university in question was RMIT but it could have been any of them. Go to your website and read the language, Watson urged guests at a recent Deans of Education dinner. That made people laugh even more. They worked at universities; they knew what he was talking about. Some of them probably even wrote this stuff. It was a surreal moment. But to Watson the joke has a sting. It is funny and it is awful. A terrible thing is happening to the language, he believes, and at the end of the day, in a globalised world, it is not a positive communications outcome. In other words, there is a pox upon our public speech.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
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.
Ah, but what do you want to leverage? Why, solutions, of course. What kind
of solutions? Enterprise solutions, obviously. And why do you want to
leverage these enterprise solutions? In order to set the company on
a critical path to achieve total quality, monetize the bottom line, and
raise the bar and set the standard for the entire industry, of course. Ah,
but here's the real question: *how* do you leverage the enterprise solutions
and set the company on a critical path to do those things? You need a
gameplan, a gameplan to get everyone on the same page going forward in a
fault-tollerant and robust expectations paradigm, that's how, because only
with that kind of dynamic will you really out-compete the competition in the
new ecconomy. So, we need to revisit our objectives and reorient our goals
so that we -- all of us -- can accomplish this vision, this future, indeed,
this destiny. Everyone has to participate in the process, because you can't
meet the kits if you don't go to St. Ives...
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I know of small busines CEOs/CIOs that look for specifics. Those that try to sell buzzwords don't get the sale, and salespersons with hardware/software knowledge have a decent chance. Often, though, the small-business IT staff will have found the optimum product(s) to solve the problem and already have the purchase order ready to sign as soon as the problem is diagnosed. That is true adaptability and flexibility in my humble opinion.
I also know of people who would make Dilbert's PHB look like a genius. I've seen one business with a division that was losing to a competitor in many areas, with their IT lag seriously hurting their situation. That business did not realize that their IT was causing a problem with customers, even though it was painfully obvious.
I have also met IT sales staff people who were reprimanded for giving specifics (such as cables, switches, routers, hubs, NICs, CDs, and licenses,) instead of using the term "solution" when presenting the cost estimate to the CIOs of companies who were interested in their product.
I think too many people have sat through too many marketing classes without learning anything, and this is the result. Sales people are instructed to sell a solution to a problem instead of the actual product, and a lot of CEOs and a few CIOs know they have a problem without knowing the cause, and just want a solution. Consequently, solutions have a higher margin than products, even if the product is exactly the same as the solution.
Or, I could be wrong, and PHBs are only a figment of Mr. Adam's imagination.