[nylug-talk] Why does "enterprise" imply "Java"?

[GeekNoob]

  I have to agree here.  In my limited time in IT, I am Middle 
Management, Sys Admin, Help Desk, website maintainer, and partial Coder 
all at once.  (Don't get me wrong, I'm not a programmer by any means, 
the worst I've done is some VB in Excel.)

We aren't a technology firm, but a smallish law firm with a single 
person IT Department, so much of this is going to be in parallels, but 
the point is still the same.

 >From where I sit (sometimes precariously!) I want:

    * a program that is easy enough for my users to grasp (having 40
      people call me at once for this, that, and the other thing too, is
      NOT fun),
    * is stable,
    * does its job,
    * and is something that I can administrate while doing everything
      else (IE, not something that requires 35 hours of tweaking and
      cajoling, because I have an entire department to run solo).
          o This can be OS, this can be Enterprise, or this can be
            something I wrote myself on a weekend.  I don't particularly
            care /where/ it came from, only with how it performs.

What upper management (the managing partner in my case) wants:

    * Something that is used by other companies,
    * and Something that is a name brand with one throat to choke. 
          o Something "Enterprisey".

Who wins in this argument?  The person that knows IT and knows /where/ 
costs may be cut and what is absolutely critical?  Or upper management 
that is providing the funds, but has little knowledge in the area?

Again, I am not a coder.  I have the barest grasp of this thread from 
some Java/C++/Assembler courses (I've not touched RoR or anything else 
because I lack the time to learn something that isn't relevant to my 
actual job).  But  it's not what other programs (in my case, languages 
in yours) /don't/ do that makes Management shy away from things, it's 
that "well 90% of the other law firms use A or B, not Y, so A or B must 
be better.  Get us a quote from one of them.  Period."

Translation to code-speak?  Programmers want (gleaned from this thread 
mostly):

    * something that is easy to code in (otherwise we'd all be using
      Assembler),
    * gets the job done to company and personal satisfaction,
    * documentation,
    * comprehensible syntax,
    * API's that don't break each other,
    * and libraries (no need for re-inventing the wheel). 
          o Java, PHP, RoR, many things can be used here.  It's all
            about personal preference, really.

What management wants:

    * Someone to choke.
          o The bigger the throat the better. 
          o They also (sometimes mistakenly, just look at M$) think that
            the bigger the company, the better the product.  Therefore,
            they want Java.  It's backed by a huge Corp after all!

I'm not entirely sure how this turned into "My language can beat up your 
language!", but that's my take on why companies lean towards the 
commercial everything vs OS stuff.  (Though even in this office they use 
some, and they don't even know it at times.)

~Kelly

Matt Stockdale wrote:
> My 2 cents as a server/network jockey, rather than a coder.
>
> Google is as much a software development shop as they are a search
> engine company. They have the resources to "roll their own" - Indeed,
> the output of their "roll their own" efforts is their product, and what
> they use to differentiate themselves in a crowded space.
>
> If you make widgets, your want your development staff writing software
> that enables your primary business, without having to build a custom
> framework from scratch - You are selling widgets, not frameworks.
>
> To me, "enterprise" implies predictability, portability, and
> re-usability rather than feature set, and all of the things that come
> with/from that.
>
> Matt
>
>
> On Fri, 2006-07-07 at 14:29 -0400, Ajai Khattri wrote:
>   
>> mike at jurney.org wrote:
>>     
>>> The context of the discussion is the enterprisey nature of J2EE, and this
>>> is a major facet of it.  The J2EE set of APIs is defined, maintained,
>>> revised, and distributed by Sun.  In the large business world, this fact
>>> (not that it's Sun, necessarily, but that it happens this way at all)
>>> carries with it enormous credibility.  The point I'm trying to make is
>>> that, at least partly, it's the fact that you don't have to figure out how
>>> to put which projects together to get a certain kind of functionality
>>> which makes J2EE enterprisey.  I'm not trying to be snippy, I chose the
>>> name "junktrunk" to emphasize this point.
>>>       
>> In other words "benevolent commercial entity overseeing Java" wins out 
>> over the open-source model (where noone is "in charge" to dictate how 
>> something should be pieced together and/or evolve"). Similar for Linux 
>> (where RedHat is considered "enterprisey"). But I also think this is 
>> partly perception/marketing - you only have to look at Google (mostly 
>> open-source based and they dont use any "enterprise" linux either) to 
>> see someone doing very well commercially.
>>
>>
>>
>>     
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