
“Enterprise software” is a social, not technical, phenomenon - luu
https://www.mail-archive.com/kragen-tol@canonical.org/msg00109.html
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kitd
Though I wouldn't necessarily take the same cynical route, I would reach the
same conclusion: that enterprise software lives in a world dictated by
budgets, administrative costs, and politics. This shouldn't be so surprising
though as IMHO the cost of a system failure increases exponentially with the
size of the business. Bob & Brenda's online pet store going down won't make
much difference to anyone. RBS's systems going down was top item on the main
BBC evening news here in the UK. Bad PR and loss of goodwill in a major
company can take years to recover.

As a result, the costs of running enterprise software massively outweighs the
cost of buying it. Data centers are huge expensive beasts to run. Access to
the systems & software is strictly controlled. Upgrades are deliberately made
difficult to minimise the chance of untested changes going in. You are
normally required to submit a timescale for how long it will take for you to
(a) do the upgrade, and (b) rollback if the upgrade fails. Your slot will be
(a) + (b) with no leeway. Failure to rollback correctly has serious employment
ramifications.

You will also need to demonstrate how many FTEs are required to run your
system, since the staff costs are the single largest cost in the ongoing cost
of the system. This is partly why J2EE servers became popular. All typical
enterprise services are normally in place already and administering one J2EE
application is much like administering any other.

Ease of backups/restarts/hot failovers etc must be considered. Can you just
get away with moving a transaction log or are there some convoluted and
proprietary steps that must be taken?

Software development is my main job role, but I spent a year as a system
architect for an oil major. It really was an eye-opener and I recommend it to
anyone who wants to become well-versed in all the pressures and tensions
involved in running enterprise software.

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frik
The article is from 2005, but still very relevant and true.

The quality of enterprise software is often lower than one would expect from
the price tag.

