Why Enterprise Software Sucks • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#251

Post by asjw » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

ridaj wrote: post #152

freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

No, this does completely get it right. Enterprises thought they needed all the control and security features of Blackberry until the iPhone came along and made the UX gap unsustainable. Enterprises thought they needed on-premise hosting of Exchange, Office and SharePoint instances under their control for email and productivity, until GSuite came up with a better, less configurable user experience based on consumer fe…

No serious enterprise uses gsuite , it's a small businesses tool.

iPhones and smartphones in general have greatly increased the risk of data theft or being spied.

Insurance companies are more than happy that others have switched to smartphones (I worked in insurance consulting for cyber risks)

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#252

Post by Justin_K » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

mfer wrote: post #197

ridaj wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this does completely get it right. Enterprises thought they needed all the control and security features of Blackberry until the iPhone came along and made the UX gap unsustainable. Enterprises thought they needed on-premise hosting of Exchange, Office and SharePoint instances under their control for email and productivity, until GSuite came up with a better, less configurable user experience based on consumer fe…

Enterprise software is a sub-class of business software. Enterprises often operate quite differently from SMBs. Public US companies will have things like SOX compliance. And, the enterprises offering up services, like email, may be competitors in another space. If you are competing with Google on phones do you want them to host your email? Likely not. The business world is complex. Some complex business software is f…

Another big gotcha that hits large public organizations is that the software must be ADA compliant. This is extremely difficult and expensive to meet. Most small vendors do not meet the minimum requirements or even consider doing so.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#253

Post by lmm » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

ibejoeb wrote: post #159

dmix wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of SaaS businesses aren’t really SaaS, they’re glorified custom development shops with a few high paying customers. That’s not a great business to run though as it’s very difficult to scale. Far too many fall into the trap of saying yes to the first BigCo that comes by early on because they need the $$. While they neglect every other niche and business where it could fit like a glove. Or more often doesn’t even…

> they’re glorified custom development shops with a few high paying customers That's true, but sort of necessarily so, though. How else do you build a product that meets such a broad set of needs? Someone's got to do the work. At some point, features are going to drop linearly.

A lot of the time the client would be better off buying actual custom software. It's very easy to end up with a SAP (say) "configuration" so complex that you'll spend more on maintenance than you would if it were a standalone program.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#254

Post by neuromantik8086 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #115

freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

Sometimes I wonder, what if we just fundamentally took a new approach the OS. Today at the root of your operating system is the file system. It would be interesting if the file system was changed to essentially the concept of a simple object store. In much the same way we have "standard file formats" today, we could move to something like a "standard class". Objects would be a first class citizen in the OS. I think t…

As others have pointed out, what you're describing isn't a fundamentally new idea or even that revolutionary. You're basically describing a database filesystem. Onne Gortner attempted an implementation of this concept in 2004 as part of his/her master's thesis (see http://dbfs.sourceforge.net/). Systems like Spotlight are effectively a partial implementation of this concept- OS X essentially has a hybrid setup where there's both a database and conventional filesystem running in parallel. Going back further, locate (first implemented in 1982) could almost be viewed as a proto-Spotlight. Gmail's labels/tags are another example of a mainstream implementation of this.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#255

Post by Macha » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

ridaj wrote: post #152

freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

No, this does completely get it right. Enterprises thought they needed all the control and security features of Blackberry until the iPhone came along and made the UX gap unsustainable. Enterprises thought they needed on-premise hosting of Exchange, Office and SharePoint instances under their control for email and productivity, until GSuite came up with a better, less configurable user experience based on consumer fe…

The compelling feature of gsuite for my employer was apparently the ability to turn off IMAP etc and therefore rule out emails being kept locally/beyond the retention period for better access control/cheaper legal compliance, not anything UX related.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#256

Post by rightbyte » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #115

freddie_mercury wrote: post #20

I think this gets it wrong. The real reason enterprise software sucks is that enterprises have complex and unique workflows and would prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business with tens of thousands of staff who will need retraining. If you look at all of the most successful software of all time they are the complete antithesis of the Unix…

Sometimes I wonder, what if we just fundamentally took a new approach the OS. Today at the root of your operating system is the file system. It would be interesting if the file system was changed to essentially the concept of a simple object store. In much the same way we have "standard file formats" today, we could move to something like a "standard class". Objects would be a first class citizen in the OS. I think t…

Big blue made OS/2 for you.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#257

Post by jimmyvalmer » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #240

Plyphon_ wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In enterprise the incentives are all wrong - individuals who are decision makers for enterprise software/networking/security/etc have an incentive to make their job as complicated as possible so they can be promoted or build their empire through hiring new resource to keep on top of the complex web they've built

This is something I see all the time when a new developer comes on board with stars in their eyes. The first thing they try to do when they see a glaring inefficiency is fix it. Then they get burned at the stake because the inefficiency they are publicly denouncing is the reason a whole team of people exist. Large portions of every enterprise are essentially parasitic.

My nether regions shuddered upon reading this. Thank you. Now bring on the flagging.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#258

Post by Macha » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

asjw wrote: post #251

ridaj wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this does completely get it right. Enterprises thought they needed all the control and security features of Blackberry until the iPhone came along and made the UX gap unsustainable. Enterprises thought they needed on-premise hosting of Exchange, Office and SharePoint instances under their control for email and productivity, until GSuite came up with a better, less configurable user experience based on consumer fe…

No serious enterprise uses gsuite , it's a small businesses tool. iPhones and smartphones in general have greatly increased the risk of data theft or being spied. Insurance companies are more than happy that others have switched to smartphones (I worked in insurance consulting for cyber risks)

Does 200k headcount count as enterprise?

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#259

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

Goladus wrote: post #223

alistairSH wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck, even within my niche corner of the enterprise world (coincidentally a similar niche as Blackboard), there's always a noisy client who demands X. I can make all the good-faith arguments about why X really isn't needed, but if that client is threatening to go to a different vendor or sue, X is getting built. As a developer, there's only so much I can do before an account executive or C-suite tells me to quite bit…

Despite what it seems, demand for features is really NOT why enterprise software is (so often) bad. The problem is how easy it is to SELL fundamentally bad software simply because you can tick a box saying it has the feature. Yes, I too have seen the phenomenon of having too many people demanding features where the result turns out to be an incoherent mess. But I also know that if the massive amount of time and money…

I think you're absolutely right. One error some organizations make is trying to buy a COTS product they assume will be simpler and more robust (and have its bugs fixed "for free" by the developer of the product) over hiring a part-time or full-time staffer to maintain and improve their existing non-COTS workflow (including owning all the bugs).

Sometimes (I have no global numbers to even guess at how often), they end up discovering that the COTS product requires expert-level configuration and administration anyway and now they're footing the bill for someone else's licensed solution and a staffer to understand it and make it work.

Re: Why Enterprise Software Sucks

#260

Post by mongol » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

A regular larger enterprise probably have at least 500 individual software systems, that have evolved over 30 or more years. Around this you have several tens of thousands of employees. This landscape can be compared with an extremely complex machine, or possibly with an organism having equally many organs as there are systems. It is no surprise it sucks because this can never work without constant manual intervention to fix what breaks and does not work as expected.