Hi Mike
I have been through some of these arguments recently and would make the following points
1) expensive to procure, maintain and change
Can be true - but also true that organisational inefficiency probably costs far more for many organisations than working with a good software as a service company where development is ongoing and maintenance is taken care of . ( I know I am straying into another debate here, but SAS does offer a solution to complexity if they take on the problem )
2)putting organisations at risk of having a single, potentially quite risky, point of failure
When procuring software the risks are always assessed - several connecting systems have risks of their own, so it's not a given that the single solution is a bigger risk. It depends on what development has been done on integration - generally speaking you want software where most of the learning has been done on other people's systems.
3) “ok” at all of those bits, but not excellent at any single one of them
The general argument doesn't always hold. Development usually takes place because there is a strong need in the market. Some clients I deal with (not all) have a very strong need for integration, and that's particularly true for clients who are not enormous institutions with entrenched systems. So I am not surprised to find that things are on the move, and integration is on the agenda for some software suppliers. There is no perfect solution in any case, and I think the key is being able to work with software suppliers to move things forward, while minimising the risks and sometimes going for 'done not perfect'. And I'm a perfectionist!
Sarah
On 11 Feb 2014, at 17:51, Mike Ellis wrote:
> Hi Cristiano
>
> First off, I should make it clear that, no, I haven’t tried your system and therefore have no direct experience of it - so should apologise if I appeared negative about something I haven’t tried. That wasn’t my intention - I was making a general point.
>
> [ And yes, I’d like to try it - and would be delighted to be proved wrong ]
>
> But: in my experience - and ** I’m not talking now about Qi but in general ** - IT systems that try to be everything to everybody: CMS, CRM, DMS, ecommerce, ticketing, whatever - *usually* end up:
>
> 1) being expensive to procure, maintain and change because of the enormous complexity that they represent
>
> 2) putting organisations at risk of having a single, potentially quite risky, point of failure
>
> 3) being “ok” at all of those bits, but not excellent at any single one of them
>
> You’re right - there are risks the other way too. Duplication, redundancy, all of that - these are real problems that will probably never go away. But you often get the same data issues in a monster does-it-all system, surely? You also mention organisations getting stuck - surely they’re much *more* likely to get stuck if they’ve got a 100-ton system that runs everything than if they’ve got 10 systems that do each of the separate bits? What if the owner of that system ups the license fee by 400%? Or goes bust? Or decides they’re not developing their system any more? What then?
>
> Personally, I prefer having loosely knitted, fit for purpose bits that have a joining principle, rather than a monolithic, central thing. But hey, as I said earlier, that’s a personal view. It comes from my extreme (and probably irrational) hatred of enterprise IT :-)
>
> Would love to hear what everyone else thinks!
>
> cheers
>
> Mike
>
Electric Lane
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