Greg Reemler
Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:21:42 +0000
I started my career in IT many years agoand since that*yearhave worked in enterprise IT for year and years.**** Almost all ofmy odd career storyevolves aroundworking with end users, often advising, architecting and managing the complexity of large systemsintegration projects, from hands onimplementation to strategic vision development. My deep background is with Techrotech in network systems engineering.
A few years ago, years after I started my career at Techrotech, I grew a bit dismayed at*enterprisesoftware companies.** They would, for the most part,always come to us, the end users,and try to sell us large software packages. Their sales and technical teams had very little domain knowledge of the problems they claimed they could solve -and they hadlittle doubt that if we purchased their wares, our problems would be solved,
These software*companieswere keen on buzzwords and technology*jargonbut somewhat clueless on operational solutions or the challenges of implementation across a large federated organizationwith many powerful business units and �in name only� CIOs. We often referred to these software sales guys, and their favoritesystems integrators,as �drive by (orfly by)implementations� where they dump the software (and hardware) at your door and run like crazy!
So, I joined a very coolSilicon Valley company,**NerwanaSoftware, hoping to change all of that, or so I thought 
Naturally, when I first came on board Nerwana , the entire organization, from executives to recent new hires out of school, heaped praise-upon-praise on my years of operational experience at Techrotech and elsewhere.** They cheered me on as I wrote papers and created slides on operational use cases andevent processingsolutions that the sales and solutions teams could take to market.** They sang my praises as I spoke to large audiences and evangelized their most innovative software and solutions.* They were pleased with the great reviews from customers.
Asone would expect, Iwas destinedto learn the face of the*problemsI experienced as an end-user �outsider,� now from an�insider�s� perspective.
Oneof the interesting challenges that surfacedat Nerwana was the �let�s export our cultureand business model to the world� mantra, maybebetter referred to as �if it sells in New York,*then*we*mustsell it the same way in Tokyo or Bejing!�
Also, I really was surprised to find out how dependent*Nerwana*wason the opinion of analysts.** When I was worked for the customers and end users, we rarely paid any special attention to the analyst�s opinions.** Sure, analysts provides a good data point, but that is all it was (or is), simply another data point.***
I soon found that software companiesare often held hostage by �analyst chasing� which really was an eye opener for me, because we end-users, the people who actually buy the software,view analysts as mere mortalsreading from thesame foggy crystal ball as everyone else.*
Another oneof the fasinatingchallenges Iexperienced atNerwana was whatsome would call �The Hero Culture.�**
I�ll elaborate onsome these, hopefully interesting, observations and experiences in a future Page fromGreg�s Diary.
