Almost all of our potential and current clients come to us with some kind of existing technology based view of the software and solution world.
What varies massively is their attitude to – and internal understanding of – their own perspective.
In our case they are about to influence their company’s decisions and approaches to intranets, workflows, collaboration platforms and document management systems. With other software partners they will potentially bring the same perspectives to bear on very different projects.
It does seem to me that in most cases the perspective – or bias - as that is what it amounts to in practical terms – that they bring is not thoroughly evaluated in an internal sense.
So basically potential clients might indeed understand their preference for certain approaches but they have almost never, as far as I can see, worked out whether these barriers are internally acknowledged but something they would like to explore the possibilities of escaping from – or a philosophy to which they are embedded for the long term because they have made fundamental decisions in favor of it on the basis of cost savings, recovery strategies or any other framework for increased efficiency or ROI.
When you think about it, this is quite extraordinary.
The most forward looking companies are always looking for ways to break out of the technology perspectives that might in any way constrain their capacity to innovate. They want to break down barriers.
The bias that a company imposes on an IT selection process are in the new world increasingly far reaching.
As an example in the past the decision might have been purely on the type of database, because the back up and DR strategy favored one over the other or because of the availability of internal trained DBA resources. These are purely internal but highly justifiable reasons.
As the internet based software world changes and solution suppliers like Claromentis respond to this rapid progress, and it is certainly progress, we need to deal with the fact that a single supplier can now offer :
• Mash up services
• Database abstraction layers to support any database you need
• Complete cross platform deployment from Linux to windows
• Relatively low cost rapid development of complex internet based software
• A choice of cloud based computing or perpetual licenses
• Open source extendable commercially supported solutions
• Complete independence of the branding layer over the business logic
So what value a technology bias of any kind in this brave new world of customizable solutions on any platform in any pricing and deployment model?
Old fashioned bloated solutions are on the way out – COTS solutions and open source extendable frameworks appeal to the modern way of leaving your perspectives on the doorstep, increasing innovation and delivering completely unconstrained value to the business.
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