Business Sotware Is Bloated, Buggy, And Expensive

manadren_it · Post by **manadren_it** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 3:20 am

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/magazine/con...25/b3838630.htm

Commentary: Business Software Needs a Revolution
It's too complicated. It's too expensive. That's why it's change-or-die time

Marc Benioff, the chief executive of startup Salesforce.com Inc., has a knack for getting under the skins of his far bigger business software rivals. He has hired actors to stage protest rallies calling for the "end of software" outside his competitors' customer conferences. Borrowing from the '80s comedy Ghostbusters, he has handed out "software busters" pins. And he has told anyone who would listen that today's business software is too expensive and too dang complicated. "We have created an industry of complexity and we need to do something about it," he says.

Is Benioff a showman or a sage? Probably both. Sure, his antics are a way to promote his company, which dishes out sales force software as a service over the Internet. But there's also a lot of truth behind his shtick. Talk to a typical software buyer, and you hear the same complaints: It's too complex, with installation projects that can take years to finish. It's too expensive, with starting prices in the six figures and reaching into the millions. And it doesn't do what they thought it would do. "You know, the buyers of these things are starting to say, 'Wait a minute, maybe this stuff should work,"' says James Morris, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

It's amazing it took Corporate America so long to do this reality check. After years of buying the latest and greatest software, the computer rooms in many companies are "pure chaos," says Aneel Bhusri, a venture capitalist and a director at eight software companies, including PeopleSoft Inc. The cost of that chaos? Last year, the National Institute of Standards & Technology estimated that the annual cost of difficult-to-use or flat-out buggy software on the U.S. economy was $59.5 billion. Analysts estimate business-software customers spend $5 installing and fixing their software for every $1 they spend on software.

All that bad news is catching up with business-software makers. Sales of programs for things like companywide financial systems, procurement, and supply-chain management, combined, dropped 2.4% last year, to $35.8 billion, says AMR Research Inc. It's the first time in more than a decade that the market has slipped. This year, sales are expected to inch up 3%. For the software industry, which grew more than 20% per year in the late 1990s, such snail-paced growth is a jolt.

There's a troubling analogy to be made here to the fall of the American auto industry in the 1970s. As early as the 1950s, quality assurance experts like W. Edwards Deming were trying to win converts to rigid quality standards. Few in Detroit listened. But quality management was embraced in Japan, which helped to make the Japanese auto industry a powerhouse. Today, software quality gurus have been largely ignored in Silicon Valley. But in the new tech center of Bangalore, India, quality experts have been welcomed.

Could Bangalore do to Silicon Valley what Japan did to Detroit? Don't bet against it if current trends continue. "Software companies have to change," says Henning Kagermann, CEO of German software maker SAP. "We need to be more like the auto industry -- quicker and better at development, from innovation to customer support."

There's no reason the industry can't get there. After interviewing customers and experts, BusinessWeek has identified four ways to get software on track. They're not the only answers, but they're a good start.

ENOUGH WITH THE FEATURES. THE WORLD IS AWASH IN SOFTWARE BELLS AND WHISTLES. Today, software can do everything from automate a human resource department to manage a supply chain. To paraphrase futurist Clayton M. Christensen, once all the necessary functionalities -- or features -- are done, new additions just increase the chances of bugs. "I think the [industry] has filled up the functionality bucket," says Rick Berquist, chief technology officer at PeopleSoft Inc. "I think now we're in the reliability era."

How? For starters, give up the "not-built-here" dogma that has kept some software makers from working with new, easy-to-use programming building blocks made by Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and IBM. That reluctance also has made some companies slow to adopt standardized programming technologies like the Extensible Markup Language, which makes it easier for different kinds of software to work together.

STOP. TAKE A DEEP BREATH. DON'T RUSH BAD SOFTWARE OUT THE DOOR. Database giant Oracle Corp.'s flubbing of its first all-Internet business software, Oracle 11i, is legendary. Consumed with being first to market, Oracle CEO Lawrence J. Ellison pushed to get his software out by the summer of 2000. Problem was, it had an estimated 10,000 bugs. Customers balked, and Oracle's application revenues fell 11% by the end of 2002. Is there a magic cure here? Heck, no. Just old-fashioned self-control.

Business-software companies can do more by doing less with individual releases. "They have to acknowledge they can't solve world hunger with one software release," says Art Eberhart, director of global information technology services at Dow Chemical (DOW ) Co. Eberhart says he would like software companies to think of innovative ways to clean up their programming so it's easier to use. If it takes a couple of releases to get it done, that's O.K.

EMBRACE AUTOMATED TESTING AND QUALITY MANAGEMENT. Give Ellison & Co. credit: They learned from their mistakes. Since the initial 11i release, they've started working closely with Mercury Interactive (MERQ ) Corp., which makes software that tests other software for performance and helps automate bug-testing procedures. That helped cut in half the customer complaints about updated versions of 11i.

Software companies also can turn to quality assurance standards such as the Capability Maturity Model championed by Carnegie Mellon. CMM, among many things, defines what are repeatable processes in software development -- much like an auto production line -- and ensures that those processes are done exactly the same way, every time. CMM also saves money for the software makers. By adopting rigorous quality standards like CMM, Web software maker Interwoven (IWOV ) Inc. was able to cut about $1.5 million in waste out of its $8 million annual R&D budget, says Alex Choy, vice-president for engineering at Interwoven.

LEARN TO LOVE SOFTWARE DELIVERED AS A SERVICE. Although few software execs may actually say it, many agree with Benioff: Software should be delivered as a service over the Internet instead of shipped to customers on a disk. If the people who designed the software are the ones actually running it, wouldn't they have an easier time fixing it when something goes wrong? Keith Raffel, chairman of Upshot Corp., which also delivers sales force software as a service over the Web, says that when Daylight Savings Time began in April, his engineers found a clock error in Upshot's software. They were able to fix it before any customers realized there was a glitch. "Can you imagine the problems if we had to go out to every customer in the morning and ask them to make this fix?" asks Raffel.

The lesson from Upshot and other software makers is that the industry can fix the problems that make customers so unhappy. Now, they just have to do it.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:19 am

This is true, software is becoming more and more complicated, but yet has more bugs. 10 000 bugs, that's plain crazy!

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manadren_it · Post by **manadren_it** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 4:07 pm

It's good to see the business world waking up to the fact that bells and whistles over stability and usability is not allways a good idea. I'm not a big fan of the idea of sotware as a service though, but perhaps it could be a good idea for business.

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 9:09 pm

took businesses long enough to figure that out.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 9:22 pm

Yeah.

I don't believe in software as a service either. I don't believe in paying for files, I rather pay for a physical object - a CD and manual and you can install it many times with no worries.

But they should consider stability over bells and whisles, or they can go with Linux - there's both.

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 9:38 pm

Red Squirrel wrote: Yeah.

I don't believe in software as a service either. I don't believe in paying for files, I rather pay for a physical object - a CD and manual and you can install it many times with no worries.

But they should consider stability over bells and whisles, or they can go with Linux - there's both.

the problem is too many people actually think that when they buy let's say m$ software. they don't realize that it's just a "license". and that's the big trick. make people think they actually own the software when they really don't. give them the warm gooey feeling when using a piece of software and no one questions why they shelled out money to only be able to "license" software. you mean I don't own it? but i got the install cds...

and when these people start acting like they "own" the software and distributing it on let's say kaaza, it's called piracy. all's i know, if i own something, giving it to joe blow somewhere in bumf*ck, egypt is not piracy since it's my software. but anyway, this rant is offtopic.

you can actually thank the recession since that caused companies to look into what's necessary and what wasn't. they actually opened up their eyes and joined the few who do realize that crap like ms word has way too many "features" that are unnecessary which causes it to be the only word processor i know of in history to require frequent security patching.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 9:50 pm

haha, a word processor needing security patching, that is pretty funny.

Yeah that is true though, even if you own the cd, it's still a limited license. For example, my OEM win98 downstairs is proably considered illegal, since to Microsoft, I should get all new hardware compatible with 2k or xp, get a new PC, and upgrade.

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manadren_it · Post by **manadren_it** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 10:09 pm

Yeah you notice that whenever microsoft comes out with a new piece of software, they stop supporting all older versions of it. Honestly the last new feature in MS Office I cared about was the whole automatic underlining misspelled words in Word thing, and that was what, office 95? And since then, for all intents and purposes for me, it's been the same stupid piece of software with a different name and more crap I don't care about. But MS has to change the file types every year, while slowly removing support for older versions. If the businesses and schools didn't use MS office, I wouldn't either. Because as far as I'm concerned the best word processor doesn't save doc files, it saves txt files....

Come my brothers! Join the ASCII revolution!!!

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 10:10 pm

manadren wrote: Yeah you notice that whenever microsoft comes out with a new piece of software, they stop supporting all older versions of it. Honestly the last new feature in MS Office I cared about was the whole automatic underlining misspelled words in Word thing, and that was what, office 95? And since then, for all intents and purposes for me, it's been the same stupid piece of software with a different name and more crap I don't care about. But MS has to change the file types every year, while slowly removing support for older versions. If the businesses and schools didn't use MS office, I wouldn't either. Because as far as I'm concerned the best word processor doesn't save doc files, it saves txt files....

Come my brothers! Join the ASCII revolution!!!

gvim!

well, i do like openoffice too.

well that's not the worst thing, imo about msword. the worst is they keep changing their *.doc format. word 95 doc is not the same as 97 doc which is not the same as 2000 doc which is not the same as office xp doc which will not be the same as office 11 doc. it's a transparent ploy to get people to upgrade.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 10:47 pm

Yeah I hate that too! They always add "features" but none of them mean much to me, in fact, some I spend time trying to figure how to disable because they are a PIA. For example, the auto change feature. It encourages bad spelling habits. Not only that, but it's totally un-intelligent. For example, I was typing in frech "États-Unis" and it would switch it to "Etats-Unis" and then mark it red, if I would right click, it would suggest "États-Unis", then I would keep typing, and it would change it back!

Turns out, "États-Unis" is the right way!!! The way I first typed it as! (that's the french spelling for United States by the way

)

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 10:50 pm

bad spelling? man try turning on the grammer checker too. where in sam hell did the guys at microsoft learn English?

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manadren_it · Post by **manadren_it** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 10:53 pm

Honestly I've never used gvim before, but I have used vim a couple times. Commands are a b*tch to learn but it's very powerful.

I may have to cehck out open office, but all I use is word and excel, and even that only on rare occasions [resumes and stuff like that].

The .doc problem is a pain though. Makes it so even if your perfectly fine with office 95, you have to upgrade to keep compatitble with other businesses schools, etc. Oh sure they say they offer support for older file types, but it usually rips the files to shreds, almost to the point where your better off opening the file in notepad and skimming off the binary...

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:01 pm

gvim is a full gui port of vim. you can use the commands if you want, but you don't have to cause it follows windows standards for selections, copying, cutting, pasting, etc. way better than notepad.

yeah, the ripping of new msword with old msword formats is a pain. but they force that upgrade on you because if you're using office 97, you won't be able to read joe dumbsh*t's office 11 document unless he saves it as a 97 doc which most of the time joe dumbsh*t doesn't cause to him 97 *.doc is the same as 2000 *.doc which is the same as XP *.doc which is the same as office 11 *.doc. but joe dumbsh*t chooses office 11 *.doc cause it's the default and is listed at the top. and even if joe dumbsh*t does save his document as a 97 *.doc, there's no guarantee that it will render right. i've seen that happen with me using msword 2000 and saving as a 97 doc so i could play with it on my win98 computer using office 97. that was a mangled mess.

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Red Squirrel · Post by **Red Squirrel** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:16 pm

Seen it too, converting usually causes problems, especially with tables.

I think all word processors should stick to one standard: html. You can do almost anything with html, formatting etc...

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:20 pm

Red Squirrel wrote: Seen it too, converting usually causes problems, especially with tables.

I think all word processors should stick to one standard: html. You can do almost anything with html, formatting etc...

ah, but as bill gates once said, "How would we get paid?" one standard is not conducive to getting paid....

just look at how msword mangles xml which is the format they've been using from i think word 2000. sure, companies will use a standard, but you can bet they're gonna mangle it so they can get paid by making it harder for other companies' software to be able to read it.

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Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:38 pm

megaspaz wrote: bad spelling? man try turning on the grammer checker too. where in sam hell did the guys at microsoft learn English?

NEVER use a spell checker or grammar checker. They are TRASH!

You just need some good skill and good eyes.

I was typing in frech "États-Unis" and it would switch it to "Etats-Unis"

AH! So I did do it right?

I know what that means!

I feel so French right now!

I live in États-Unis d'Amérique!

Which is located on Amérique du Nord! I hope that's right.

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:48 pm

takahita_tsukino wrote:
megaspaz wrote: bad spelling? man try turning on the grammer checker too. where in sam hell did the guys at microsoft learn English?
NEVER use a spell checker or grammar checker. They are TRASH! You just need some good skill and good eyes.

I was typing in frech "États-Unis" and it would switch it to "Etats-Unis"
AH! So I did do it right? I know what that means! I feel so French right now! I live in États-Unis d'Amérique! Which is located on Amérique du Nord! I hope that's right.

wee wee. you be frenchy!

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Chris Vogel · Post by **Chris Vogel** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:50 pm

megaspaz wrote:
takahita_tsukino wrote:
megaspaz wrote: bad spelling? man try turning on the grammer checker too. where in sam hell did the guys at microsoft learn English?
NEVER use a spell checker or grammar checker. They are TRASH! You just need some good skill and good eyes.

I was typing in frech "États-Unis" and it would switch it to "Etats-Unis"
AH! So I did do it right? I know what that means! I feel so French right now! I live in États-Unis d'Amérique! Which is located on Amérique du Nord! I hope that's right.
wee wee. you be frenchy!

You mean oui oui.........

I am not French! I only want to learn French for Canada, NOT France...

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Wren · Post by **Wren** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:53 pm

I stay with one language, thank you very much! The only other language I know anything about, is southern slang.

Can I o'c this mouse?

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:54 pm

takahita_tsukino wrote:
megaspaz wrote:
takahita_tsukino wrote:
NEVER use a spell checker or grammar checker. They are TRASH! You just need some good skill and good eyes.

AH! So I did do it right? I know what that means! I feel so French right now! I live in États-Unis d'Amérique! Which is located on Amérique du Nord! I hope that's right.
wee wee. you be frenchy!
You mean oui oui......... I am not French! I only want to learn French for Canada, NOT France...

doesn't oui oui make ow-ee ow-ee?

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Wren · Post by **Wren** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:56 pm

You're good mega!

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megaspaz · Post by **megaspaz** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 11:58 pm

Wren wrote: I stay with one language, thank you very much! The only other language I know anything about, is southern slang.

Can I o'c this mouse?

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