

The enterprise acquisition process hasn't changed - chrisaycock
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/13/new-enterprise-customer/

======
gregpilling
There are some mistruths in the article - it states "Big Companies Don’t Have
Credit Cards Purchasing anything in a large organization requires a rigorous
justification process that generally culminates in a purchase order (PO). They
do not allow their employees to use their credit cards to buy technology off
of the Internet. In fact, at many companies, doing so and attempting to
expense it after the fact is a fire-able offense." Which is not true at all.
The US Government uses credit cards, many employees have one and I know for
sure that the US Border Patrol vehicles have a credit card assigned to each
vehicle (with a no approval needed limit of $2500 per purchase). My wife works
for a large university and also has a department issued credit card.

Also I object to "If you work in a startup, you might wonder why large
organizations don’t just trust their people to make smart purchasing
decisions. If an employee needs a new technology, why wouldn’t the company
just let him do the right thing? There are many reasons:" In the case of my
wife's most recent laptop she did have some restrictions - it had to come from
the University computer store which limited her choice to Apple, Dell, Lenovo
or HP. Some limit. Oh, and it had to be under $2000.

He also states "Some of the systems are outdated, complex, and downright
arcane. Nonetheless, once deployed, enterprises develop great affection for
the technology that runs their companies. They may complain about it, but like
an old woman speaking of her spouse, the underlying love is far stronger than
the criticism. And big companies expect you to love their old products too –
by integrating with them." I believe that this is also incorrect. I don't
think businesses love their old systems, just that they are stuck with them.
The business needs to function everyday, it can't just try something new, it
needs to keep going. So old systems become like a heroin addiction for the
company. They would love to get off the 30 year old stuff, but they can't. So
they adapt (or get you to adapt) and keep plugging along with the old setup.

