Thursday, July 26, 2007
So, what does it mean to be enterprise ready?
Have you ever ran across an enterprise architect who said that a piece of open source software isn't enterprise ready? Figured I would highlight what they are really attempting to say...
It may mean that they have been successful at being an enterprise architect but have no technical ability and need assistance in terms of getting something up and running. The problem is that enterprises have habitually not budgeted monies for consulting in the upfront processes as they have gotten used to vendors doing this for them for free.
It may mean that until Gartner in terms of their Magic Quadrant and Forrester in terms of their Wave start listing open source projects next to proprietary closed source implementations, they don't have outside cover. They know that there is no possibility of these analyst firms ever putting vendors who don't pay them side-by-side next to ones who do and therefore won't comment.
It may mean that they are technically savvy and don't really care about the lack of integrity in the industry analyst world but may not have visibility into who else is using it. Sometimes, knowing that your competition is using it becomes stimulus for you to also consider it. Most enterprise architects mistake leadership for followership.
It may mean that none of the above apply and the real problem is that no one won't pay them any attention and they acknowledge that only outsiders will grab the mindset. After all, folks in large enterprises want to hear from folks other than whom they are forced to interact with on a daily basis. For open source, there is no one that will entertain folks within their enterprise by coming in and doing a wonderful four-color chock-a-block eye candy powerpoint presentation.
It may also mean that if you don't have a vendor visiting your enterprise, then there is no one to provide you with wonderful trinkets, golf trips or even t-shirts
Finally, it may mean that while the enterprise architect understands that open source can save their enterprise money, it may be detrimental for their resume. We know with closed source products, they can get training from vendors where as in most cases, open source requires them to figure much of it out for themselves
Is there anything else I should add to the list?
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