

Will Google Wave succeed inside the enterprise? - bensummers
http://thinkingrecords.co.uk/2009/07/21/will-google-wave-succeed-inside-the-enterprise/

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TomOfTTB
The reason I always dread these "will [x product] succeed inside the
enterprise?" posts is because most bloggers simply don’t understand enterprise
computing. In an enterprise, features don’t necessarily win the day (which is
the argument this author makes). A good enterprise has a few primary
concerns...

1\. The availability of good support 2\. An obvious return on investment 3\.
Ease of deployment 4\. Integration into existing systems 5\. Products that
require testable skill sets from employees

Microsoft wins in the Enterprise generally because its support is so good. If
you have $245 and a phone you can solve any problem with a Microsoft product
even if you’re a low level tech support person. They will sit with you for
however much time it takes to fix the problem (even overnight if necessary).
On the other issues Microsoft publishes tons of Return on Investment studies,
half of Sharepoint is already built in to Windows server, Microsoft has gone
to all kinds of trouble to make Windows developers able to manipulate
Sharepoint and they offer certifications to test possible employee knowledge.

Google on the other hand offers no support for its services, Google Wave is
way too different from anything that exists to demonstrate return on
investment, deployment is easy but worrisome from an IT perspective because
you have no control over the server, and there’s no skill set to test for just
yet. The only thing it has going for it is its ease of integration.

The concepts of Google Wave may very well make their way into the Enterprise
but we’re years if not decades away from that actually happening. When it does
I suspect Microsoft and every other enterprise application vendor will have
competing products making the discussion no more than academic now.

~~~
bensummers
While true about the average blogger's understanding of enterprise computing,
the author of this particular blog has spent a good few years deploying
Sharepoint into enterprises.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I read his bio and all it says is that he's worked as a consultant.
Consultants don't deploy anything (though they will claim they do).

You bring in a consultant to advise you but they never make the actual
decision or even necessarily know what thought process is going into that
decision. In this case the proof is in the post itself. Not only does he not
address all the factors I mentioned above he focuses on things Enterprises
simply don't care about. Again I say: Support is king. If you write about
Enterprise IT without even mentioning support you don't know what the heck
you're talking about.

I'm not blaming consultants. The nature of a consultants job (never actually
doing the work) creates an enviornment where he or she is detached from what's
really going on. But that detachment means their opinions on IT computing and
what drives it are next to useless.

------
zby
Google Wave is packed with interesting ideas but it is so much more complex
than SMTP, FTP, HTTP or other universal communication protocols. Maybe it is
time for such complex protocols - maybe we have now better libraries and
faster computers - but it will be hard.

