Enterprise Software Needs To Be Simpler

Over the past week I have been working on a project with some professionals in an effort to help their employees get a better explanation of certain technologies. Specifically the recent case involves the difference in SQL operations between MySQL, Postgres and Oracle. 

My assistance has been mostly involved with virtualization planning and implementation, some remote access testing, overall review of infrastructure, and technical troubleshooting. One of the main pain points has been with Oracle or specifically the steps to install and properly configure it. The group while generally well experienced had been mostly experienced with Open Source based software such as MySQL and Postgres. Oracle was reasonably new in that they only had a few years of experience as opposed to longer experience with the other software.

The fundamental issue happens to be what is considered "easy" between typical Open Source and enterprise packages. MySQL and Postgres are pretty straightforward and easy with an abundance of good documentation. Oracle on the other hand is not as straightforward requiring quite a few configuration steps that are not necessarily easy to follow. Even the documentation which is quite extensive is not the most straightforward in terms of finding specific information. There is no wiki site per se. However there are quite a few walk throughs and guides that do help depending on your platform.

The commercial Open Source packages are the result of a collaborative effort between the participants of the community. It shows in a lot of what is delivered. It is easy-to-read, easy-to-find, easy-to-follow, compact, concise and effective. The same cannot be said for larger enterprise software such as Oracle. It is large taking a lot more storage space, more complex which requires more planning to implement, and less "easy-to" as it's roots trace back to more closed community approaches where enterprise customers had to deal with degrees of user-friendliness. 

The issue with the approach especially in times such as these is that the lack of ease-of-use is pretty much a huge barrier to adoption. With increasing competition from all fronts, enterprise software needs to focus on lowering that barrier. That barrier means more time and expertise resulting in higher costs and lost opportunities. There is significant debate as to whether Oracle is actually needed especially for internet shops other than perhaps to run internal payroll or help desk. As more and more companies start to compare notes with each other for insights as to how to operate better, many stories about the use of software such as MySQL, Postgres, Hadoop, couchdb, and others rise very quickly. 

I have used Oracle among many other enterprise software applications for years. In comparison to the progress made to their commercial Open Source competitors they have not moved fast enough to address this barrier of adoption. I can see how this barrier impacts technology professionals views of such applications. Younger professionals coming out of college are more prone to use Eclipse, MySQL, Java, and other technologies to improve their techniques and solve problems. Very few actively go out of their way to learn large enterprise technologies because they dislike how long it takes to learn and the lack of relevancy of that software if they decide to move to different companies. Also many experienced professionals are not necessarily the best teachers with many not having the patience nor the skill to pass along knowledge to make the process of learning easier. Hence, more and more professionals entering the technology field are less concerned with enterprise software as opposed to exploring commercial open source. As this trend continues technology groups within an organization will find themselves under increased pressure to adopt more current practices and open source technologies or find that they will lose their appeal to talented employees who will leave for more interesting opportunities at other companies.

In the end if enterprise software wants to improve, it has to get back to appealing to more technology professionals across many generations while delivering value by solving problems. If this barrier continues to be present, as the more experienced professionals move onto retirement, vendors may quickly find themselves with customers who really do not care about their products due to past experiences; such how much of a pain the product was to deal with to get something done.