We’re working on a conversion project for a big software company. They have this proprietary data format that “is necessary for product performance”.
That’s fine, except that it’s total poppycock. They’re locking you in, then kicking you in the teeth with a lie.
As is true with thousands of software policies out there (it might even be millions, I didn’t do any research on that number), this is just a way to lock customers into a solution and make it difficult to leave.
The get a clue moment:
Customers will leave if they want to, especially if your software, well you know, sucks. Why not put some effort into discovering why they leave and FIX IT?!?
Then earn their trust by making it easy to leave if they decide they need to.
Making it difficult to leave is a one two punch for your customers. First you make crappy software, then you make them start all over with a new solution while you scratch your head at their negative reviews and blog posts.
Your job as a company is to make your customers lives better in some way. They pay your bills, and they decide whether your company lives or dies.
Too often, we spend time on what we think our product designs should look like when our customers are telling us something else.
When was the last time you shut up and listened to them?
We’re going to apply to put “componentable” in the dictionary.
Just what is “componenetable” you ask?
We’ve been looking at a score of “Unified threat” solutions for the last few months. On a VERY broad scope there are a few major components of a security architecture that need to be addressed:
In this example we assume things like firewall/vpn/network based external attacks to the network are covered somewhere.
There are two basic solution groups to solving the above problem areas:
Appliances are:
- Easy to install and manage
- Typically have one interface
but:
- Have questionable scaling issues
- Typically make it difficult to replace one component
Software solutions:
- Have good scaling solutions (it’s trivial to buy better hardware)
- Make it easy to swap one product for a given solution
but:
- Require multiple interface to control, manage and report
- Require operating system management on top of the component’s management requirements
In PART 2, we’ll talk about some ways to select solutions that have some advantages of both approaches, then later in the series we’ll talk about how to develop your apps to do a hybrid of both approaches.