Paul Graham Gets Vague when Boston needs analysis • Hacker News Board

Re: Paul Graham Gets Vague when Boston needs analysis

#21

Post by ratsbane » Wed, Oct 17, 2007, 5:54 PM UTC

kansando wrote: post #17

ratsbane wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS is right. Most of the big enterprise packages were started by college graduates but that certainly doesn't make it a requirement. Most of the big computer companies were started by college graduates, too. And then there was Apple. You can't be innovative by thinking that just because something hasn't been done a certain way before that it shouldn't be done that way. Real innovation REQUIRES violating some general…

"Real innovation is one thing that that the current crop of enterprise software is largely missing." Based on what? You don't think virtualization is real innovation? Spend some time learning about Netezza, Endeca, ITA, BladeLogic, Scalent, VMWare... before making blanket statements that are blatantly inaccurate.

What does virtualization have to do with enterprise software? I'm talking about systems which store and manage access to company financial, inventory, human resources, etc. data(1). Things like SAP, Peoplesoft, Great Plains, and even Quickbooks. The examples you give are all very nice and innovative I'm sure but they aren't really examples of the same thing. (Except maybe for ITA but that's very specific to airline industry.)

You could have mentioned salesforce.com. That would be a valid counter to my original argument.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_software

Re: Paul Graham Gets Vague when Boston needs analysis

#22

Post by natrius » Wed, Oct 17, 2007, 6:28 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #12

natrius wrote: post #5

"I would like to caveat this section myself and ask the readers a question of even Paul himself should he notice this article, does the more aggressive investor demand a larger percentage of the business for the same amount of investment dollars offered by a less aggressive investor?" In Silicon Valley, you'll get more offers from investors for funding since the investors are more aggressive, and as a result, you're…

I think that "aggressive" is being misinterpreted. SV VCs have a greater tolerance for risk, at least technology risk. It seems quite reasonable that riskier investments should have greater potential reward. (Otherwise, why take on the additional risk?)

That's what I mean by "aggressive" as well. Since they're more likely to make risky investments, you'll get more offers from VCs.

Re: Paul Graham Gets Vague when Boston needs analysis

#23

Post by rams » Wed, Oct 17, 2007, 7:28 PM UTC

ratsbane wrote: post #21

kansando wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Real innovation is one thing that that the current crop of enterprise software is largely missing." Based on what? You don't think virtualization is real innovation? Spend some time learning about Netezza, Endeca, ITA, BladeLogic, Scalent, VMWare... before making blanket statements that are blatantly inaccurate.

What does virtualization have to do with enterprise software? I'm talking about systems which store and manage access to company financial, inventory, human resources, etc. data(1). Things like SAP, Peoplesoft, Great Plains, and even Quickbooks. The examples you give are all very nice and innovative I'm sure but they aren't really examples of the same thing. (Except maybe for ITA but that's very specific to airline i…

"What does virtualization have to do with enterprise software?" - Which rock were you hiding under ? Come out and face the bulbs :-D

Seriously though, one counterpoint could be that, Apple and Google - companies that had two of the biggest IPOs in history are not really enterprise software companies.

Re: Paul Graham Gets Vague when Boston needs analysis

#24

Post by kansando » Wed, Oct 17, 2007, 8:31 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #19

kansando wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All Enterprise companies need sales forces. In a post SOX environment, you can't just get adoption by setting up a viral chain. Then there is the large subset of enterprise world which is infrastructure and that will never look like Web 2.0. As for Bill Gates, that is an old example. If you look at even the last 15 years, the most successful enterprise companies (VMWare, Siebel, SalesForce, ...) were founded by seaso…

What is your definition of "enterprise"? If it's Fortune 500, then I agree with you. If it's the other 7 million small businesses ($1 to $100 million annual revenue, many outside of SOX enforcement), then I disagree. These people have literally been dying for good software forever. They are already leapfrogging the enterprise software bandits and installing their own mission critical systems, many based on open sourc…

You are right to ask for a precise definition. I mean the Fortune 5000. What you are describing (usually called the mid-market) definitely will be a play for Web X.0.

Re: Paul Graham Gets Vague when Boston needs analysis

#25

Post by ratsbane » Wed, Oct 17, 2007, 8:57 PM UTC

rams wrote: post #23

ratsbane wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does virtualization have to do with enterprise software? I'm talking about systems which store and manage access to company financial, inventory, human resources, etc. data(1). Things like SAP, Peoplesoft, Great Plains, and even Quickbooks. The examples you give are all very nice and innovative I'm sure but they aren't really examples of the same thing. (Except maybe for ITA but that's very specific to airline i…

"What does virtualization have to do with enterprise software?" - Which rock were you hiding under ? Come out and face the bulbs :-D Seriously though, one counterpoint could be that, Apple and Google - companies that had two of the biggest IPOs in history are not really enterprise software companies.

I think we're using two different meanings for "enterprise software."

I mean it in the sense of the system which stores all of the business information for a company or other organization (the "enterprise".) It keeps track of things like "who are the employees" and "who are the customers" and "what inventory do we have" and "where is it" and "where's the money" and things like that. This includes systems which can be described as accounting, customer-relationship management, human-resources management, etc.

You could also call it "Business Information Management" systems although the phrase "Enterprise Software" is more common (at least among my peer group.)

Companies like Seibel, Peoplesoft, SAP, Great Plains, Oracle, sell this stuff for a lot of money to big companies who then spend absurd amounts of money hiring poor idiots like me to work with it. In fact, that's exactly what I've done for a large part of the last ten years, for two different Fortune-100 companies, and I've had plenty of opportunities to observe these systems and think about ways of improving things

The biggest innovation in this type of software has been the move from using a client program on each user's desktop to web-based but their web interfaces aren't very good.

While virtualization may be very important to how an enterprise runs its software it's not directly applicable to the software itself. The employee who goes to a web page to sign up for a new health insurance plan doesn't know or care whether the web page is coming from a VM or a Sun box or a Dell box - but the fact that he CAN sign up for a new health insurance plan online or request a different schedule or generate a verification of employment letter to use in getting a mortgage.(1) THAT is important to him.

And that's the kind of enterprise software I'm talking about.

(1) All three are innovative features that the enterprise systems most people use don't have.