
The Enterprise: I’m Not Sexy And I Know It - kumarshantanu
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/06/the-enterprise-im-not-sexy-and-i-know-it/
======
statictype
Biggest problem in selling to enterprises:

The CEO talks about wanting scalable cloud solutions using hypervisor
technology without block-based attached storage.

The people using the system are treating it as Excel with a slightly crappier
UI.

In most large organizations, the problem isn't providing a way to let their
large amount of data scale. The problem is getting people to even input that
data into a useful format so that it can be analyzed at all. You will spend
man-months designing a system that handles all edge cases only to find out
that they can't or won't even enter any useful configuration and support data
to make it usable.

Everyone wants to talk about how your resource allocation and planning
algorithms work with mobile technician work forces. No one can answer whether
these fancy systems actually save costs or increase efficiency. _And they
don't care either_.

We sell software to enterprises. It is a kafka-esque nightmare.

~~~
krutulis
Yes!

Dear Businesses, it is not your fancy code & tech specs that make you special,
it is your business data. Pay attention to your data and the people who create
value with it.

I'm always disappointed by enterprise customers who can talk for days about
their endlessly complex systems and their fantastic dreams of building and
customizing exotic new & infinitely flexible applications, and yet these same
people are completely unable to answer the most basic questions about how
many, how often, and how value is created. When pressed, they call some poor
intern to wrestle with SAP for a few weeks in attempt to answer what should be
routine business questions.

Then come the horrors of talking to the people who are forced to use these
systems and witnessing the heroics required to get them to work for the
business. And that's just the folks who haven't given up entirely and instead
spend their days with a list in Excel.

~~~
praptak
> And that's just the folks who haven't given up entirely and instead spend
> their days with a list in Excel.

Some folks are more creative than that. Crappy UI? No problem, we have
markers: [http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/02/whats-the-waiter-doing-
wit...](http://javlaskitsystem.se/2012/02/whats-the-waiter-doing-with-the-
computer-screen/)

------
pjmlp
Spot on.

This is what many startups miss when promoting technologies to Fortune 500
companies.

In the enterprises usually you don't change stuff for the sake of it, unless
you're trying to keep the budget for the next year and need to avoid having it
reduced.

As such it is easier to introduce incremental changes as radical new ideas.

~~~
tomjen3
The real problem is that those behemonths don't want to change (when change is
necessary) and they can drag on for years, slowing the rest of society down
with them.

------
Roritharr
The main problem of enterprise startups isn't to find the right problem-domain
but rather the sheer amount of work power it needs to find and solve the edge
cases. Big Co uses a lot of Custom Software for a reason... The bigger it
gets, the more custom solutions they use. SAP and Oracle employ a boatload of
people just for that reason.

If you're interested in enterprise startups you should start looking for a
really specialised piece of workflow that is common among huge company's and
try to solve that in its entirety better than the existing solution.

~~~
count
Most large enterprises are aware of this (hell, they sometimes consider their
'uniqueness' a competitive advantage). If your product is MOST of the way
there, and you're willing to engage the enterprise appropriately, they'll
usually fund the development of the edge case support for their unique
situation.

This breaks the pure SaaS model though, as they'll probably not want their
pieces given to their competitors.

~~~
Dylanlacey
I don't think "sometimes" covers it. Almost every medium to large enterprise
I've come across considered some/all aspects of their custom software
solutions to be a business advantage, even when they weren't applicable to
their customers at all.

Everyone wants to be special, and it's a very compelling internal narrative,
that your stupid/wasteful/annoying/irrelevant processes (and thus software) is
actually a strength.

------
noirman
Wait, this sounded familiar: <http://danshipper.com/b2b-is-unsexy-and-i-know-
it>

------
robryan
I guess this may not have originally been written for tech crunch but it comes
across as intentionally opaque for a general tech website. Wouldn't be to hard
to extend on the acronyms and provide some links that explain them to a
general tech audience.

------
pinaceae
I don't agree with the statement that ERP will not move into the cloud. The
same was said about CRM (omgwtfbbq it is our customer data) - and look how the
market has changed.

SAP themselves are pushing HANA, which is seriously cool tech and will be the
foundation of moving big ERP into the cloud. A bit interesting how in-memory
architecture is not discussed at all here at HN. Started in pure BI/Analytics
with tools like Qlikview, but now it is growing up.

See here: [http://www12.sap.com/solutions/technology/in-memory-
computin...](http://www12.sap.com/solutions/technology/in-memory-computing-
platform/hana/overview/index.epx)

ORA is a bit on the slow side, they are pushing better bundles with hardware
instead (exadata).

------
nahname
How much longer until people actually get fired for choosing IBM, SAP, Oracle?

------
ucee054
_Application-level SLAs without giving up the economics of multi-tenant:_

Any one who wants to both have his cake and eat it is destined for
disappointment.

~~~
Evbn
Why? This sounds like how EC2/Heroku/AppEngine/Lithium work

~~~
ucee054
On EC2 you don't even have cost savings from multi-tenant, because EC2 costs
more than dedicated hosting.

So let's consider the logic of the proposition instead of particular
companies.

The benefits of multi-tenant come from not having to pay to dedicate a
resource. We can both use it and we each only pay a fraction of the cost.
However, there is trouble if we both try to use it at the same time.

The benefits of SLA or any kind of quality of service guarantee come from
having a dedicated resource. You know that you can always use it because I (or
anyone else) can never use it.

These two goals are not compatible.

~~~
count
Don't underestimate how cheap EC2 can be to a large organization, with
complicated rules and structures around things like physical facilities, etc.

Especially when you buy down the rates for 'reserved' instances (or even the
FFP GovCloud stuff).

~~~
ucee054
First, what you describe is the _appearance_ of low cost (next to a horrible
alternative), as opposed to _actual_ low cost.

Second, the _reason_ for this "cheapness" is not _multi-tenancy_ but the
_complicated rules and structures_.

The larger point is that Rodney Rogers' article asks for too much.

In fact, I believe _most_ companies would go bust trying to fulfill his
requirements. If I were to win his business I would turn it down.

I believe the _best_ he can hope for realistically is that SAP add some more
hypervisor support to their software.

