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The Death of Licensed Enterprise Software? 234

Posted by CowboyNeal from the all-things-must-come-to-an-end dept.
tfsm writes "Andy Singleton wrote a short, interesting article about the looming death of traditionally licensed, proprietary, enterprise software over at The IT Manager's Journal. In it, he talks about the declining revenues of software giants such as Siebel. There are several causes, but one, he suggests, is erosion from Open Source offerings."
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The Death of Licensed Enterprise Software? More

The Death of Licensed Enterprise Software?

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  • TrueCrypt (Score:4, Informative)

    by urikkiru ( 801560 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:41AM (#12663643) Journal
    This is probably very true. I mean, recently I was looking into partition/harddrive/virtual drive encryption programs. There are a number of identical looking commercial apps available. However, TrueCrypt(sourceforge) offers the same or better features really. Honestly, if you have to choose between the free solution, which is a mature stable choice, and one that will cost your company hundreds of dollars per license.... well, it's not much of a choice, is it?

    • Re:TrueCrypt (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kubla2000 ( 218039 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:45AM (#12663659) Homepage
      In addition, the traditional "support" argument is pretty much out of the picture these days.

      If you're talking about boxed software then support is limited to a "knowledge base" database and rudimentary and usually dire scripted phone support.

      Support for customised applications is expensive and no different to the support contract you are likely to get from a good consultancy that has built your enterprise application on an open source platform.

      • "Support" (Score:5, Informative)

        by maynard ( 3337 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @10:01AM (#12663727) Journal
        If you're talking about boxed software then support is limited to a "knowledge base" database and rudimentary and usually dire scripted phone support.

        Out of the box commercial software pretty much like this. However, if you're talking enterprise solutions from Oracle, SAP, IBM, EMC, NetAPP, and even Sun (unfortunately, whose support quality has declined recently IMO) then it's a different game. Pay for a contract and you will get highly knowlegable engineers to solve whatever problem that crops up within the confines of the contract. I've been very impressed by IBM in the past. DEC used to have pheonominal support. So, while your copy of TurboTax may not get you the support you feel you deserve, it's not the same with big iron hardware and enterprise software. At least, not in my experience. --M
        • enterprise solutions from Oracle, ... then it's a different game. ... DEC used to have pheonominal support.

          Two of your examples have been big disapointments for me, and are one of the main reasons why my company is moving away from commercial software.

          We had a customer database in Oracle, with some engineering applications, developed by our engineers in Fortran. We had to upgrade to Oracle 8 because the hardware was replaced. Then we found that Oracle had dropped support for Fortran. Worse, we had a sup

          • i am maintaining [glug.org] a port of GNU [gnu.org] emacs [gnu.org] (which is written in C at its core) to VMS [glug.org], and am interested in learning about the bug you mentioned.

            is the bug report (and more interestingly, the 50-line piece of C code that demonstrates the bug) posted anywhere public? (do you have a link handy?) thanks.

            back on topic: i wonder if emacs is considered "enterprise software".

          • Sounds to me like you were provided a pretty reasonable level of technical support, and it was the product support that let you down. You can't blame the support engineers for this.

            It sometimes works that way in open source too, though there's a decent chance support can come back. Case in point, fortran support in gcc: it looked like it was going to languish as a cheap F77 implementation forever, but only recently came back in force (still don't know how well it optimizes tho).

        • True, but I was also talking about Enterprise level application support.

          A document workflow system developed with OSS or by a proprietary company is only as good as the support it will get.

          I know a large HR company who can't get Adobe to give it the time of day for what's, to them, an urgent feature request. A consultancy that developed the workflow system using OSS might be equally reticent to respond but at least the HR company will be able to hire in someone else to deal with it for them.

          It comes down

        • Re:"Support" (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Tintivilus ( 88810 ) <tintivilus AT tintivilus DOT org> on Saturday May 28, 2005 @12:04PM (#12664226)

          I think the key point of your argument was this:

          Pay for a contract and you will get highly knowlegable engineers to solve whatever problem that crops up within the confines of the contract.

          This is true whether the software in question is a based on closed-source or open-source. You need to find a vendor who will meet your business needs first; whether that solution is closed- or open-source should be a secondary consideration

          Open-source software allows more businesses to get into the "Enterprise Software" business by using existing (Free) products that they're free to tailor to customer requirements, and the customer is free to find a new consultancy if the old one goes under / is bought out / starts to suck.

        • Not my experience (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Namlak ( 850746 )
          After numerous dealings with "Enterprise" software (read: $$$) 90% of the time I end up dealing wtih a reseller/parter/consultant/whatever who is just a $140/hr guy with a certificate who's just going to call support and/or lookup my problem on the website. And usually these guys fly in and start loading software on any server they happen to spot 'cause that's the way they did it in the class. And they have no knowledge of the difference between an app server, SQL server, or anything else. Nor do they kn

    • Re:TrueCrypt (Score:2, Informative)

      by jaseuk ( 217780 )
      I don't agree with your comments about truecrypt.

      With enterprise features you're looking for administration tools so that the IT department can manage software installations and deal for instance with lost password issues. This is completely lacking with truecrypt and as such couldn't even be considered as an enterprise encryption solution, employee drops dead, quits or forgets password and then all the data is lost.

      It also does not allow you to easily encrypt your operating system volume, nor does it su

  • Lacking details (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:42AM (#12663647)
    Great articles. No sales numbers. No real explination given. Just lots of guesses and assumptions my some guy. I'm impressed. About all I've learned is that Siebel's licensing revenue is down. That, and it's written by a guy whose job is to sell software to big companies. Wow.
    • Having been witness to a million dollar fiasco with Siebel I think Siebel's licensing revenue is down because they make a shitty product.

      In a nutshell, they came in and promised the world and ended up delivering something like the nastiest part of New Jersey.

      Ironically, our inside developers created a Cold Fusion app and were able to solve all the problems Siebel wasn't.

      So, I don't think licensed enterprise software is dead. Only poor quality half assed licensed enterprise software. Granted, I've had m
      • In the middle of the .com boom, Siebel made every techie come in suit, no casual wear. I don't know what the dress code is there now. But Siebel has the hidden agenda of being a business-first, technology-second company. I am not trying to single out Siebel, but they like every other licensed software company... are too money driven.

        Can you imagine telling Linus himself he needs to have kernel 3.0 out in a week because some customer who doens't know dick just wants it. Because the customer has money,
      • I 100% agree with this. After watching 2 businesses which we had contracts at work with completely drop the ball on customer service after switching to siebel I can know what you mean.

        Gateway, which we ordered warranty parts from using a siebel database, started having parts ship within weeks or months. Their old way got us warranty parts ordered before 3pm there the next day by noon. AFter about 6 months to a year of this, most of our clients switched to dell (which we also have a contract on) and it was
  • .. if it isn't "Roll Your Own"?

    A company which purchases the infrastructure it requires to operate and expand, isn't an enterprise. It's, at best, half of the solution.

    If you have a business scenario which is driven by software processes, confronting the software creation, and being fully responsible for the continued evolution of that software, is the only way to guarantee continued survival as an enterprising solution to your customers. Buy something from someone else, and you put the majority of the

    • Re:What is True Enterprise ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:48AM (#12663676)
      Do it Yourself. This is the keystone for future business success.

      You don't run a business, do you? Any business person can tell you that this is 100% wrong. You should only design your own software if 1. Your needs can't be filled by off-the-shelf stuff 2. There's some kind of value or competitive advantage to doing it yourself 3. You can afford it.

      Unless you're a software company, software is just a tool like any others. You may as well have said that the only way to success in any business is to build your own trucks instead of simply bying them.

      • Re:What is True Enterprise ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @10:11AM (#12663775)
        I couldn't agree more. If you're not in the business of building software, you shouldn't be building software. Same goes for trucks, warehouses, cranes, desks, and anything else your business may require.

        Hell, even if you *are* in the business of building software, you may well be better off buying it in instead. My company is a software house (we do web-apps), there's no way we'd write our own web server or RDBMs, we'll get one from a third party (be that mySQL, MS SQL Server or Oracle, etc).
        • If you're not in the business of building software, you shouldn't be building software. Same goes for trucks, warehouses, cranes, desks, and anything else your business may require.

          UPS builds their own trucks, or rather has trucks designed to their specs built by Morgan Olson [grummanolson.com]. The original Checker cab company [wikipedia.org] used to build their own cars. Anyone who ever rode a Checker cab knows how comfortable they were.

          If software plays a big role in your business, then rolling your own may give you an extra competiti

          • You are correct, but you also make the point that "rolling your own may give you an extra competitive advantage."

            It's a cost-benefit thing - can you afford to devote x months, y developers, and z dollars to developing software which could be purchased for much, much less? Now I must admit that sometimes the answer is yes. But I also spend a good deal of my time convincing managers and small business owners that they shouldn't always "do it in-house" because being able to do it is not the same thing as bein
        • I work for a company that outsourced their web-app development to third-parties. And they all suck really badly.

          On one of them, a loooong form is split up in several tabs and pages- and the "next", "previous", "submit" and "void" buttons all sit next to each other with the exact same icon.

          Even a barely competent dev should be able to spot that as a show-stopping UI bug. The cost in wasted time by operator mistakes is at least an order of magnitude larger than the annual license fees.

          I'm not saying your a

          • What kind of acceptance testing was implemented that allowed this kind of UI bug to slip through? And, considering the fact that you are paying them to deliver a reasonably competent product, why wasn't this fixed?
      • No, 2. is the only one that matters. If making it yourself is better for your bottom line, you do that. If buying it off the shelf is better for your bottom line, you do that. That is your only consideration.
      • "Any business person can tell you that this is 100% wrong."

        Actually, no. The market will tell you different things, depending upon what you're looking at. For small businesses, yes, you are right. They usually buy COTS stuff and can't affort to write things from scratch.

        As the business grows and gets more complex, then they DO start writing things from scratch. Things like custom spreadsheets and what not. They do this because they need to tune the COTS stuff to their business needs.

        As the business

      • You should only design your own software if 1. Your needs can't be filled by off-the-shelf stuff 2. There's some kind of value or competitive advantage to doing it yourself 3. You can afford it.

        Let's not forget 4. It's more economical to roll your own and support it than to buy someone else's.

        I've been in several situations where it made more sense to built my own than to buy someone else's.

        This isn't the case in every scenario, but it should always be considered as a viable option with pros and cons, j

      • Not quite. If your business is information, you should build your own software. This is where things like banks, insurance companies, perhaps ISPs, etc... fall. Your business is information, if you outsource all the actual "information handling", then what exactly are you adding to the equation? The company that makes the uber bank software package that gives you everything you need to be a bank will, in short order, become a bank itself, or be bought by one.

        Same goes for places like boeing and Ford. For
    • On the other hand, there are some things that every (or at least many) companies are doing, like HR, payroll management, finances, inventory management, etc...why should everyone re-invent the wheel? There *should* be some value in off-the-shelf software for common tasks. It's just that it all sucks.

      If anyone can build an OSS payroll/finance system that *works* and you can get support for...it'll take over corporations very quickly. Everyone I've talked to *hates* the one they've got presently.
    • If you're a business, make an inventory of the functions that you perform.

      Now pull out a B-to-B phone book (or a Thomas Registry.) Betcha find at least one entity that does that service as their primary line of business for just about every function you perform.

      Are you so sure of your competence that you think you can 'do it' better than those people who OTHER people are paying to do it?
    • Do it Yourself. This is the keystone for future business success.

      If its hard, all the more reason to do it in-house ..

      One of the goals of any business is to keep their operating costs and critical resources to a minimum. If you have an in-house application designed and maintained exclusively by a single engineer and he leaves to another company, you're going to take several months to get the replacement up to speed. If you have an off-the-shelf and/or an open-source solution, it will be much easier to f

    • torpor: What is True Enterprise... if it isn't "Roll Your Own"? A company which purchases the infrastructure it requires to operate and expand, isn't an enterprise. It's, at best, half of the solution. If you have a business scenario which is driven by software processes, confronting the software creation, and being fully responsible for the continued evolution of that software, is the only way to guarantee continued survival as an enterprising solution to your customers. Buy something from someone else, a

  • I thought software was a service (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:50AM (#12663682)
    Rather than a product. The problem with software (any information) as a product is that there is no scarcity, it's easy to copy and make more.

    Markets require a supply and a demand, to make any information a product rather than a service you have to find a way to limit supply of something which isn't naturally scarce, licenses, keys, dongles etc. Without these, limitations the supply increases to infinity and the price therefore tends towards zero.

    You may not like him, but Richard Stallman is a bloody clever bloke. The GPL and similar basically eliminate the artificial scarcity limitations imposed by most commercial software vendors.

    • what a load of crap. Software behaves like a luxury item rather than a common commodity. People tend to prefer one version over the other even if the other costs absolutely nothing. There is support revenue to be made with software too but it's a different beast and doesn't fall into your typical common/luxury commodity models. First creating copies costs almost nothing, there is no inventory stock to hold and the price of development is very high. New economic models probably need to be created for softwar
      • "Software behaves like a luxury item rather than a common commodity. People tend to prefer one version over the other even if the other costs absolutely nothing."

        Not in business they don't. Markets take time to react and it does cost to switch, I wouldn't read any more into it than that.

        "New economic models probably need to be created for software."

        LOL. Yes, that's it.

        I get the impression you're an employee/shareholder of a software company. You can't say you haven't seen the warnings.
    • Under the current system, software is a product, you're allowed to copy it once onto your hard drive, and you're given permission (a "license") to use it. The company does not allow you to copy the software again, and they enforce that restriction under copyright laws. Copyrights (and patents) destroy all free market arguments, since they create an artificial monopoly by their very design ("by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoverie

  • The real reason.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:50AM (#12663683) Homepage
    Open source is taking a dent, but the biggest threat to enterprise level and vertical markets is the products themselves.

    Typically they are low quality with bad quirks. So the company finally get's sick of it and has the replacement software written in house to replace them instead.

    Now the company OWNS the app they rely on and pay's less in "annual licensing fees" for the maintaince of the software and codebase by having on-staff programmers that are NOT dedicated programmer positions.

    I.E. the IT/Programmer is very common today. you change printer toner, install a new PC and add a feature to that Billing application, or squash a bug in the shipping application.

    Corperations are now demanding IT and IS people that are capable of all aspects and are expected to perform all aspects. That "programmer" is expected to be at the office at 3AM to deal with a crashed database server.

    It's silly to pay $60-100K for a programmer that you have to try to keep busy when you can hire someone that has good programming skills, good IT skills and actually understands Electronics at the board level for the $50-$90K. and usually get an employee that will happily work his butt off because of the diversity of the job.

    This is my observation from work here. All new hires in the IT department MUST have some programming skills in C, Java, python and PHP. We intentionally do not hire anyone that has been a "programmer" or "developer" except those that have experience in OSS as a developer. But they also must show a proficiency at IT skills and prefer that they have some EE background.

    this has lead to over 15 enterprise apps being replaced with in-house versions that work better and are far FAR cheaper in the long run even when ignoring the fact that it is an asset now because the company owns it instead of a liability when you "lease" or "rent"(buy) software.

    The great part is that versioning systems like Subversion integrate so well with linux,OSX and windows that it takes less than 2 hours to teach a new recruit how to use our system and get them up to speed in checking in and out code.

    Enterprise apps are starting to become in-house customized projects, and THAT is the biggest threat to that "business model"

    • IT/Programmer is very common today. you change printer toner, install a new PC and add a feature to that Billing application, or squash a bug in the shipping application.

      I am seeing this today in the small New Hampshire town where I work. There are two of us in the Computer Services department, so we can cover for vacations, etc. We

      • Change printer toner (and ink), and order more when the stock runs short.
      • Add features to the financial (and other) applications.
      • Fix bugs in these same applications.
      • Hel

  • Smaller Companies definitely turning to OpenSource (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kjh1 ( 65671 ) * on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:50AM (#12663684) Homepage Journal

    This trend is definitely true in smaller companies. Why spend thousands of dollars on proprietary software when you can get an open source project for free that you can modify to your heart's content? Granted, you're going to spend time and money to make those modifications, but it can be worth it when you get exactly what you want/need.

    Compared to 5 to 10 years ago, the number of open source software apps available now is mind-blowing. So much so that whenever we are researching and deploying a new application, we immediately go looking for the open source one. The proprietary version is a last resort.

  • Here's an idea (Score:2, Informative)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 )
    TFA is thin on alternatives to selling licenses, but at my company, we've gone to more of a "rental" type model of licensing, a monthly payment which bundles in support and upgrades. This is a win-win for everybody, as the customers are able to pay for it out of their discretionary budget, where a big-ticket license requires approval from the board, god and everybody.

  • The future is not here today. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Crimson Dragon ( 809806 ) * on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:52AM (#12663691) Homepage
    My skepticism grows with each time I see this topic posted somewhere. The deathknell of the proprietary has been hailed as a Roman general marching onward to victory, but let us remember this: despite the rosy forecast, proprietary enterprise software packages remain.

    While OSS has inherent advantages, the non-savvy end-users of business systems prefer lack of change to robustness of operation. If they didn't, OSS would be more prominent on the enterprise level. We tried to implement various builds of *nix and X window system on workstations at my place of work, and there was REVOLT IN THE AISLES.

    The business world is not yet ready for the intellectual (not to mention monetary) cost of full transition to OSS. As much as I love it, the end-user isn't ready. It should remain the goal of all OSS developers to give these people more and more reason to change their minds.

    Let us keep in mind: there are other reasons for the drop in revenues for these proprietary software vendors as well.
    • This isn't a battle-type situation (though we keep using war terminology). It's more like a biological infection model...the "infection" (OSS use) starts in areas where the system isn't fighting it, and spreads as it's able to find new undefended areas. It won't eliminate all resistance, but it can spread quite far, if virulent enough. The question is, are we virulent enough yet?

  • It's simple really (Score:3, Interesting)

    by prisoner ( 133137 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:56AM (#12663706)
    It just costs too much. At some level, people are comfortable running a database software just because it is Oracle or DB2. This is not terribly different than the "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" mantra back in the day. However, if you get just one enterprising geek in your outfit this *can* start to fall apart. Surely, there are applications where the support that a company like Oracle can provide can be the difference between life and death but, just as often, one of the open source DB's can fill the role.

    At my old company, we were using Siebel on Oracle that ran on a big fat Sun system. We were still in "startup" mode and spent over $300k on that bullshit. The CEO had a grand "vision" for taking the company to a new level and we had to build our IT infrastructure aggressively to support it. Well, a year later we had a E350 with 4 procs that spent most of its time idle and 20 people working in the call center. I had argued that what we needed to "plan" aggressively instead of "spending" aggresively and had been laughed outta the room for being "short-sighted".

    A year later it was satisfying to go to their bankruptcy auction....

    • Re:It's simple really (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anne Thwacks ( 531696 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @10:34AM (#12663853)
      I had an Oracle based project running fine at one of my former employers. It was based on OS/2. Then Oracle dumped OS/2 with scarsely any warning. The project was severely screwed - ever tried using Oracle without support? It is NOT like using Open Source, where you can search the Internet for solutions.

      Another employer, another year - I built a "Work in Progress" system using Oracle Power Objects. - Oracle scraps OPO because of major Y2K defects - project dies.

      Now I use PHP and Postgresql - No chance of this happening to me again.

      I have used other proprietry software since - and guess what - the so called "support" consists of some fool in Bangalore pretending he has an English name, and being unable to understand the problem I am reporting, consuming more of my time than it would take to fix the software myself. (Ten hours of my time, two weeks to NOT fix a misaligned columns in a report listing is what you get from paid support!)

      Use proprietry software - get shafted! Yeah, that will make us buy it!

      • ever tried using Oracle without support? It is NOT like using Open Source, where you can search the Internet for solutions.

        Yes, although I am entitled to support, since we pay dearly for it. You're being a bit disingenuous by saying there's not online resources. For just about any popular product you'll find plenty of webpages dedicated to it. You'll also most likely find an active usenet newsgroup or two. In the case of Oracle, you've got OTN, which is quite comprehensive. There are others out

        • I used to be a mamber of OTN, and yes, I know you can find the answers to some Oracle technical questions on the Internet, but You get no fixes and in my experience, you NEED fixes with Oracle. And also in my experience, You get fixes with Postgresql much easier.

          Nothing beats IBM's db2 service, either for price or quality. If price is no object, db2 has no competitors, but in my books Postgresql beats Oracle regardless of cost. And Oracle aint cheap (Hell, even at $5 for a pirate copy, vs free download, th

  • It's okay.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Adult film producer ( 866485 ) <van@i2pmail.org> on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:57AM (#12663708)
    Now they have millions of dollars freed up to give CEO bonuses, right where it should be ! Remember this the next time you see your boss driving his new Ferrari, "Should I really be encouraging the use of open source software, is that such a wise decision?" There are many children suffering right now that depend on the survival propreitory software.

  • In a rising tide, learn to float (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @09:57AM (#12663710) Homepage
    The commoditisation of software that open source represents is a rising tide. There are two ways to handle a rising tide: float or sink.

    Siebel, like many big software firms, are unable to float. They don't use open source for their processes, so don't benefit from it. They are stuck in a niche, so are basically anchored to the sea floor while the water rises around them. Their customers have the choice of remaining anchored with them, and drowing as well, or cutting free and floating.

    It's a bit sad if you're in the position of the drowing man. But it's been the same in Big Auto, Big Steel, Big Textile, Big Science, Big Pharma, Big Business... competition is a tough game.

    The smart money is on those firms that learn to float. IBM, CA, Novell, Apple. Maybe Sun and SAP. Apparently not Siebel, definitely not Microsoft.

    • The smart money is on those firms that learn to float. IBM, CA, Novell, Apple. Maybe Sun and SAP. Apparently not Siebel, definitely not Microsoft.

      Microsoft, on the other hand, has the resources to divert the sea for a while, and convince people that it's fine to hang out with them on the sea floor. They can build barriers, etc., while they're not drowning.

      For a while, at least.
    • Right, open source is hurting companies like siebel because they don't know how to remain competitive in the new market. If anything, open source software is creating entirely new vertical market spaces everywhere you look.

      For example, I work with a college career services office and, 3-4 years ago, all of the college office specific online systems were handled by centralized inflexible giants like eRecruiting and Career Connections. They offered very little if any direct access to data. No one was
  • These are some of the most annoying things ever invented, having to mass deploy software and then worry about ... we have 26 students and 25 lics.. Cuz it only comes in 5,10,25.... OMG time to run to the store and buy another one..

    Really, software should be lic'ed to an individual company based on the total number of deployments that they have used the past year. That way its fair to the developer, and fair to the end user. Flexable lics would be a very nice thing indeed, getting rid of them all together
  • Both Open Source and inexpensive web services will erode this market.

    On the Open Source side: systems like SugarCRM are free to implement and very high quality. On the inexpensive web services side: systems like Basecamp provide a great service at a price point that looks almost free.

    Anyway, SugarCRM and 37signals (Basecamp) are two companies that I am watching as examples of a new business model that works.
  • incompetent management. From the article:

    "The Siebel board fired Lawrie and installed George Shaheen as CEO. Shaheen was formerly the president of Accenture, and he has never run a business that depended on selling licenses."

    After leaving Accenture, Shaheen was CEO of Webvan, a short-lived dot.bomb that burned through a couple hundred million dollars before going out of business.

    Yep, that's just the guy I would as my new CEO.

  • Interesting example (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sivar ( 316343 ) <charlesnburns[ AT ]gmail DOT com> on Saturday May 28, 2005 @10:14AM (#12663782)
    "In it, he talks about the declining revenues of software giants such as Siebel."
    Well, that and Siebel's software is usually crap. For example, Siebel makes the customer management software that DirecTV uses. I've used it, and a friend of mine informs me that it crashes at least once a week, is painfully slow, and its user interface is almost as bad as that of CUPS.

    For example, when one clicks on a drop menu, there is a noticeable delay (up to 2 seconds) before the dropmenu is populated. The only reason for this that I can think of is that the app runs a DB query each and every time a dropmenu is clicked, even though the contents change very rarely. This is quite possibly the worst possible way to fill a drop menu, ever.
    To add insult to injury, the thing is a "web app", but it makes such excessive use of ActiveX and other Windows-specific tools, it eliminates one of the primary advantages of web applications: Cross-platform compatibility.

    To their credit, a rep from Siebel did say that this particular product was once a locally-run binary program, but Siebel was losing sales to competitors simply because their tool was not a web application. That is the only reason! Apparently, it didn't include a sufficient number of buzzwords, so they rewrote it to do just that.
    How much do you want to bet they'll switch its data storage medium from a proper relational database (even if it is MS SQL) to a purely XML-based system? I am sure that will be plenty fast.
    The irony is that this system was used to replace two systems that actually worked well--a OpenVMS-based control system and a Tandem-based logging system. Whomever implemented the old systems clearly valued uptime (neither OpenVMS nor Tandem/HP-Nonstop systems crash; at least, I have never seen it happen, and I've worked on such systems that have uptimes of decades), though admittedly both are rather proprietary and dated.
    I've only used 2 or 3 Siebel products, so my experience with them is somewhat limited. Perhaps some of their stuff is non-crap.

    Just goes to show--never let PHB's dominate your design decisions, at least if quality is a concern.

    • (neither OpenVMS nor Tandem/HP-Nonstop systems crash; at least, I have never seen it happen, and I've worked on such systems that have uptimes of decades), though admittedly both are rather proprietary and dated.
      As a former DEC software engineer I feel obligated to come to the defense of OpenVMS. Keep in mind that any system with an uptime in decades is necessarily going to be dated.
      John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)

  • What's killing enterprise software? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @10:33AM (#12663850)
    Simply, the enterprise software vendors themselves. At this point, they'd all have to be wheelchair bound given how much they shoot themselves in the foot.

    Over the years their prices have risen out of sync with target client business revenue, activity, and need not to mention the changing economic scene.

    Their software often seems written explicitly to confound the most experienced users and administrators and effectively prevent any ease in enterprise-wide roll-out, installation, upgrading, and administration.

    Their licensing models bear no relationship whatsoever to the realities of the usage of the target businesses, and frequently are outright hostile to newer technology usage such as multiprocessor workstations and thin clients.

    For instance, I have yet to have a single installation of any Computer Associates offering go smoothly, or anything that might be mistaken for semi-smoothly. A demo copy of Unicenter once hosed a workstation I tried it on. Given the models, methods, and practices currently standard in the world of Windows programming, and the prodigious resources of CA, that takes Herculean effort to do.

    Remedy ARS anyone? I'm sure this can't be the only software with an interface that would make a sadomasochistic OS/2 2.1 adherent's blood curdle.

    Siebel? I worked for a company that tried their code. We lost 500% productivity almost overnight. Everyone rebelled by continuing to use Remedy ARS. You have to write some horrendously bad stuff to make people prefer RARS to your offering.

    Open Source is of course, NOT a solution. Any corporation that isn't run by some weird eccentrics is going to avoid paying a code cowboy team to customize apps of all kinds, in all places in the business, and then pay their legal people overtime to make sure they are in compliance with three or six different open source-ish licensing models. As it is, there are major corporations shovelling massive greenbacks into Redmond to get Windows source access to get custom builds for their desktops. Or were when 95 was the standard. Now they might just put up with the comparatively less quirky WinXP Pro and pay a few junior desktop nerds a whole lot less.

    Many companies today, trying to cut costs everywhere, are removing a lot of very useful software that their people got very comfortable with and were very proficient with, further eroding productivity. How sad is it that the vendor of the gui has overpriced it to the point that their client would rather do without and simply make use of the command prompt interface of the routers and switches instead?

    All in all, things are not in the same way they used to be seven years ago. That does not mean however that Open Source is going to be the magic solution. OS still costs money. Programmers and support personnel and trainers do not work for free. I think neglect of taking that into account is the single biggest blindspot of the OSS boosters and if they don't stop acting as though the fruits of others' labors should be free on a silver platter and come with no cost, they will blow a golden opportunity to expand the usage of software in big business and simply hand it back to Microsoft, Siebel, etc.
    • Open Source is of course, NOT a solution. Any corporation that isn't run by some weird eccentrics is going to avoid paying a code cowboy team to customize apps of all kinds, in all places in the business, and then pay their legal people overtime to make sure they are in compliance with three or six different open source-ish licensing models.

      Don't redistribute your changes, and you are not in violation of any licenses. GPL/BSD/MPL are _all_ about distribution of the source, not about its use.

      You just happ
  • Most of the enterprise software has to reflect the fact that laws and accounting rules are constantly changing. Someone has to be doing the updates. Open source systems are not very good at the mundane tasks. There will likely always be some company paying people to study new laws and implement changes to enterprise software. Most of revenues from enterprise software come from support contracts. Enough said.

  • Open Source will eventually catch up. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MarvinMouse ( 323641 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @11:37AM (#12664117) Homepage Journal
    Now, I'm not a Open Source freak at all, but I know that by looking at the trends in Open Source software. Aside from really powerful speciality stuff, the Open Source movement is very quickly catching up on all fronts.

    Mostly due to two factors.
    1. Last programmer base. Lots and lots of people are coding open source software, and it seems the more people who code it, the more people who want to code it. So slowly, the curve grows more and more vertical with development. As well, more and more companies are actively supporting Open Source and adding a lot of umph to the movement.

    2. Open Source code that is being used never goes stagnant. If people are using it, it's getting updated and modified and cleaned up. Unlike Windows XP, which has not significantly changed since it's release, there have been many significant good and useful improvements to a variety of good Open Source projects, and if the project does the job you need for free already, you may as well use it. Case in point: CuteFTP Filezilla. I used to use CuteFTP until Filezilla became significantly more stable and had better features.

    You cannot beat Open Source using any corporate strategy, unless you are willing to put as much money as they have people. The best strategy right now, from what I can tell, is to do something similar to Net Integration, or other companies like that. Take an existing open source project, and make the saleable feature something truly new and revolutionary. Competing against open source is truly an uphill battle. Especially when you can just use the open sourced code, and make it work well for yourself.

    Just my thoughts.

  • F/OSS = Popularity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DanielMarkham ( 765899 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @11:47AM (#12664152) Homepage
    Seems to me there is a link between F/OSS and popularity of the problem space, especially among programmers. I've never seen it discussed before, so I thought I'd bring it up.

    To create a solution for somebody for nothing, I would guess you would need a bunch of qualified people to write and test the code. Since these people are not getting paid, then it would have to be something that these people are interested in solving.

    Since these people by definition are programmers, they're going to be interested in stuff that programmers are interested in. So the evolution of F/OSS will continue along the lines of stuff programmers like -- encryption, database, file sharing, photo editing tools, etc.

    It's going to be awful hard to get groundswell support for some new system to categorize ear wax, for instance. You can make the argument that so much of software is just the guts and not the business logic, but that's the whole point of software abstraction to begin with, so it's a non-starter.

    So to me the question is: who's going to care enough about mundane, boring, business-rules based code to keep it up to date? Certainly not me -- not for free. And therein lies the limits of F/OSS.
    • Since these people are not getting paid, then it would have to be something that these people are interested in solving.

      That's the flaw in your argument. There are plenty of F/OSS projects that have a commercial component, thus paid developers. Look at the Linux kernel for example - many of the key developers are paid for what they are doing.

    • So to me the question is: who's going to care enough about mundane, boring, business-rules based code to keep it up to date? Certainly not me -- not for free. And therein lies the limits of F/OSS.

      Ironically if anybody is going to grow OSS, it's large businesses. Some businesses see value in using some OS code for their own use and returning some of their own code to the wild. Open Sourcing some software allows it to be developed without having to pay programmers for all of the work. Or perhaps the co
    • Shouldn't be too hard to get programmers willing to write that code for a business. And then break that cost down with other businesses. Service model for you, go earn some money.
    • "So to me the question is: who's going to care enough about mundane, boring, business-rules based code to keep it up to date?"

      There is no reason that FOSS has to be written by people without a profit motive. So who's going to write the boring business-rules code? The businesses who need those rules coded.

      If there are X companies in the same business, it behooves each of them to contribute resources towards FOSS products to be used as the standard in that type of business. Each business benefits, while

  • biased source (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dewdrops ( 79519 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @11:55AM (#12664186) Homepage

    Read the author's bio:

    Andy Singleton is president of Needham, Mass.-based Assembla, which brings "inspired by open source" applications and development processes to enterprise software.

    His business is implementing enterprise open source software. Of course he's going to say that that's the future.
  • Well, all of those open source enterprise software are distributed under some kind of open source license (GPL, LGPL, MPL, BSD, etc) so technically speaking, they're still licensed software.
  • When can we see the death of "death" proclamations?

  • Bad underlying database structures (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Saturday May 28, 2005 @03:45PM (#12665381) Journal
    One thing I noticed about a lot of these packages is that they often have terrible underlying data models, or at least data models that do not fit a particular business well. They tend to throw indirection and duplication at the problem. Perhaps this would not be a big problem if the package hid the underlying mess from the users, but if you ever want to extract and use data from such monsters, which is a common request, you have my sympethy.

    If you want to make a better tool, allow one to model the particular company, sticking with certain conventions for hooks into the package.

    Or better yet, sell development and expertise to help companies build one to fit their own company. In other words, become a domain expert company instead of software box company, and market that expertise. "We know how to build sales-force systems" instead of selling a pre-packaged blob of software. Such a company could still sell software, but in bits and pieces or as part of a bigger semi-custom-built package. Build a Lego kit that fits sales-force software (for instance) instead of the whole deal itself.

    Domain specialists seems to be a missing software-related niche.

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