A recent Byte and Switch article described a communication gap facing a particular storage architect: CIOs measure storage utilization while storage architects measure on performance. Michael Passe of Caregroup spent a lot time trying to reconcile these two worlds. His real challenge was finding the right management software to achieve his objectives.

Describing this challenge, Michael said: I think you end up spending most of your time managing the product rather than managing the environment.” Michael is referencing the fact that his management applications have become so complex and that they require more people and more time to manage than the actual management of the services and resources themselves. I cant tell you how many times Ive heard that from customers over the past few years.

Its my belief that consumer based software products have raised the stakes for enterprise software vendors.  Customers use Exchange, Excel, and other business productivity products every day in their office environment. They are finding these products easy to understand, start, and navigate.  Whether consciously or unconsciously they now expect, even require, that the enterprise software products they purchase have the same Ease of Use (EOU) properties.

When I started Akorri this was on the forefront of my thinking.  I needed to develop products that are as easy to understand, deploy and use. Clear, simple goals that are actually very difficult to achieve.

The gauntlet has been thrown down to enterprise software companies and we better listen. Heavy frameworks that require a team of people to manage and use just doesnt cut it anymore. Customers are demanding that the products they buy put more time back into their day, not take away from it.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Akorri Blog Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.