Consultant Tells Vendors Not to Push Unneeded Products
April 22, 2009
Now that’s quite a statement from a consulting professional. Many consultants make a living selling and upselling services that clients don’t need, don’t want, and didn’t know existed. Once I fought past the irony of the advice giver, I concluded that a mini trend is building. You will want to navigate to ZDNet here and read “Enterprise Software: Are Customers Being Pressured So Vendors Can Make Their Numbers? here. At this point, you may want to answer, “Yes.” I did. Well, that’s the story. For me the most interesting comment was:
Governor says enterprise customers should get aggressive as well. They can pay more attention what their developers are says, to avoid buying software that will end up as shelfware. Also, many open source solutions may be just as good as their commercial counterparts. And take advantage of the cloud. “Focus more on work and less on dog and pony shows. If its going to take 18 months to decide what platform to adopt you’re doing it wrong.”
I have highlighted the operative phrase “open source”. The financial crisis is going to force organizations to rethink certain technical decisions taken in the past. The trend is open source. The expert delivering this message got the main part buried but at least the idea is there. Oh, put your valuables in a locked drawer when meeting with azure chip consultants. Come to think of it, the suggestion may have applicability in other software related situations, particularly search, content processing, and data management.
Stephen Arnold, April 22, 2009
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2 Responses to “Consultant Tells Vendors Not to Push Unneeded Products”
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Well, consultants would like a move to open source, wouldn’t they?
Open source (free) software providers typically don’t have a fleet of in-house consultants, so external providers can get the job of integration, implementation, etc.
And if the software cost is lower, the consultants can get a larger share of the cake.
Consultants like us don’t just like open source as it gives us a larger share of the cake – we like it because it’s easier to support clients when you have full access to the source code.
We may get a larger slice of the cake, but the cake is smaller and probably better for you, without layers of icing hiding a rather stale core!