{"id":999,"date":"2007-12-13T13:00:48","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T20:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=999"},"modified":"2007-12-13T13:00:48","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T20:00:48","slug":"nobody_understa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=999","title":{"rendered":"FIRESTORM!"},"content":{"rendered":"

New wave IT analyst James Governor has written a long post<\/a> that picks up on last weekend’s hubbub about the “sexiness” (or lack thereof) of enterprise software, a hubbub that started with Robert Scoble scratching<\/a> his Charlie Brown-like head, moved on to Mike Krigsman accusing<\/a> Scoble of not understanding enterprise software, proceeded to see the Grandstander Known as Yours Truly coming to Scoble’s defense (as I am wont to do) and accusing<\/a> Krigsman of being the one who doesn’t understand enterprise software, took a detour into Ross Mayfield talking about<\/a> getting laid, and eventually ended up with all sorts of yo-mama-ing Enterprise Irregulars, Regulars, and Rubberneckers leaping gleefully onto the Techmeme pig pile. (Can pigs leap?) Bottom line: nobody understands nothing.<\/p>\n

I just saw, by the way, that the “hubbub” has been officially elevated<\/a> to the status of “firestorm.”<\/p>\n

Look, dear, it’s a … FIRESTORM!<\/p>\n

Batten the damn hatches. No more than two on a match. Semper fi, mofo!<\/p>\n

(Before I forget: can we please take the adjective “enterprisey” by the scruff of the neck and fling it forcefully out of the vocabulary?)<\/p>\n

I seem to have lost control of my lede on this post. I’ll start again.<\/p>\n

New wave IT analyst James Governor [blah blah blah]. Let me tell you: it’s a rare event for Governor to run off at the mouth in this fashion. He’s generally a terse fellow, being British and all. (I know for a fact that he has lobbied Twitter to reduce its character limit on tweets from 140 to 97.) Round about the middle of his ramble, just after he tosses in a photo of the Kindle, he states a point that we too often lose sight of in our desire to convince ourselves that we are Masters of Our Fate: to wit, most of the great business model “breakthroughs” are really just accidents that happened to happen while some dudes (gender-neutral) were doing something that interested them. (Governor points to Google and Facebook as recent examples.) It’s only afterwards that the eggheads and pundits rush in to create the illusion that Painstaking Business Logic and Carefully Plotted Strategy were at work from the start. We are as Gods on Earth – at least in retrospect.<\/p>\n

Innovation emerges from indirection. (Remember: nobody knows nothing.) And indirection is a quality that is not dreamt of in the philosophies of the big-ass enterprise software applications, like ERP, that are characterized by having three initials and enormous sales forces. Governor points to a very insightful post<\/a> by a guy named Sigurde, or Sig, who appears to spend a lot of time in the alps, where the air is clear and the thinking is, too:<\/p>\n

\n

According to Sig, ERP actually stands for Easily Repeatable Process: “Processes that handle resources, from human (hiring, firing, payroll and more) to parts and products through supply chains, distribution and production. Known to be rigid, but handle events and transactions with precision and in volume. Systems deliver value through extensive reports and full control over resources. Resource oriented, transactional, event driven systems. Delivered by system vendors with roots in accounting using up to 25 year old technological solutions.” But Sigurde is far more interested in the Barely Repeatable Process (BRP): “Typically exceptions to the ERPs, anything that involves people in non-rigid flows [like] the daily unplanned issues that happen in every organisation. The activities that employees spend most of their time on every day. Processes that often start with an e-mail or a call.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bingo. There’s a reason that the software tool most frequently used for everyday business analysis in companies of all sizes is still Excel. (I defy you to prove me wrong.) Excel gives the individual direct control over the manipulation of information in a way that is light years beyond the capacity of your typical ERP system. Three-letter enterprise applications are institutional, not personal, but institutions, as Governor notes, do not innovate; people do. Enterprise apps are designed to prevent accidents, not encourage them. They’re anti-exceptional.<\/p>\n

Of course, Excel and other traditional “personal productivity” programs are extremely limited – they’re cumbersome, dweeby, and they are not designed for easy collaboration (despite many attempts at retrofitting). They feel, in short, like software – and the only good software is software that doesn’t feel like software. Compare Excel (or, god forbid, a typical ERP system) to a run-of-the-mill Web 2.0 site, and you get a sense of how far ahead of business apps consumer apps have jumped when it comes to ease of use and ease of collaboration.<\/p>\n

That brings me, and Governor, to the present, and the impending web-spawned firestorm in business software.<\/p>\n

You heard me: FIRESTORM!<\/p>\n

Governor quotes Doug Merritt, a guy from SAP who apparently has been up in the alps with Sig recently: “I don\u2019t worry about IBM and Oracle. I worry about Google, Amazon, and Facebook.” Then again, Merritt says, “the ‘consumer’ companies haven\u2019t fully realised the change that\u2019s upon us yet.” Bingo twice over. You need the BRP for the people and you need the ERP for the institution – and you need them tied together in a seamless web-wise bundle with a pretty ribbon that doesn’t scream “software!” at you. Governor thinks the twain shall meet in SAP’s upcoming offerings. “SAP delivering 37Signals ad-hoc collaboration with real enterprise process data and objects is sexy,” he says: “‘Wow. We only just hooked up – and you\u2019re going to let me see your \u2026 purchase order \u2026’\u201d<\/p>\n

So will SAP be the good shepherd that leads the enterprisey folks – shoot me now – to the promised land? Who knows. Stranger things have happened. But seeing as that nobody knows nothing and the biggest breakthroughs are accidental, I wouldn’t bet on it. But whether it’s SAP or Google or Salesforce or Facebook or 37Signals or Workday or Ozzie’s Microsoft or some unknown kid spilling Red Bull on his keyboard, the kindling has been lit and there’s no stopping it now. Just as pickup trucks can be brawny yet nimble, enterprise software can be stable yet sexy.<\/p>\n

Enough with the mashed-up metaphors already.<\/p>\n

Say it: FIRESTORM!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New wave IT analyst James Governor has written a long post that picks up on last weekend’s hubbub about the “sexiness” (or lack thereof) of enterprise software, a hubbub that started with Robert Scoble scratching his Charlie Brown-like head, moved on to Mike Krigsman accusing Scoble of not understanding enterprise software, proceeded to see the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}