Three things to make life easier

Had another phone call from a market researcher. She wanted to know about components Realcom Applications use to build servers and PCs. I’m not the techie but in the role of “business development” for RA I get to field all these info-hungry marketing types.

Mostly a lot of nonsense about what percentage of PCs we sold with graphics cards but there was one question that was really worth while and I answered without hesitation: “What can manufacturers / suppliers do to make your business easier?”

My answers:

1.  Provide good, accurate technical information / specifications with all products and components before sale so we can see if the unit will actually do the job. There’s no excuse for manufacturers not to include specs on the web when they spend thousands on glossy boxes and brochures covered in marketing speak.

2. Slow down the rate of new product launches so we can get to really understand and test the products in a real environment before we roll it out big-time to clients. Often we just get on top of a product so we are confident we can install it in the wild when the product goes end-of-life and we start the learning process all over again!

3. Don’t send the general public the message that this stuff is all easy. Business IT is quite a lot different from consumer electronics. It needs design (or architecting!) of the IT infrastructure, on-going support  and business continuity issues. By making it look “childs play” (e.g. the IBM blade server ads) the manufacturers are undermining the value of systems architects and value added reselling - making the sale harder and eroding our profits. 

Hope someone other than a box-ticker reads the response to this question!

Small print

Software – and increasingly that means software used on-line or downloaded from the web – is vital to our work and leisure. Every new function or feature seems to require a download or a sign-up and each time we do this we are asked to enter private or company details and agree to some terms and conditions. Sometimes this applies to required upgrades as well.

Even purchased software from the biggies such as Symantec and Microsoft require agreement to licensing and usage terms before you can complete the installation and get on with using the product / service. Now be honest – how many times do you scroll through the tiny text in the tiny window and read what you are expected to agree to?

And when you do venture into the scroll box (nothing much in the inbox today or listening to a webinar?) – do you understand what all that stuff means? Most of us just click the “I agree” box and get on with the download or install because we have jobs to do – we’re not contract lawyers.

The National Consumer Council has done a study on end-user software licensing. See the report at http://www.ncc.org.uk/nccpdf/poldocs/NCC195rr_whose_licence.pdf

I hope their report doesn’t just get left in the archives. Something should be done to address the balance of power between the software giants and the poor old user.

I have worked in IT and software development for many years. When we developed software in the “old days” writing the specification – and getting the client to agree  – was a major task often taking years (by which time the client management had all moved on to more dynamic arenas!). But we did specify what the software was going to do in gory details and how it was going to do it. Generally we didn’t get paid if the end product didn’t meet the spec.

Nowadays we mostly use and rely on packaged software. But do you know what it is supposed to do? It’s difficult to find a “specification” for software packages. Most often you will find scenarios, case studies and the differences between this version and the previous one. At least with most downloadable software you have a trial period to see if it does the job for you before committing to purchase but that seems to me a hit and miss affair and very time-consuming. Maybe the next job for the NCC is a review into presale documentation available with software and on-line services.