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Making Software Meaningful

February 14, 2008

A lot of customers that I’ve worked with for years are always wanting to know, “John, what’s next? Where do you think LUCRUM will be in five years?” Coming into our 15th anniversary this weekend, I want to look backwards and reflect on our past. When I started the company, I always had a vision of being a big “software construction” company. I always used the term “construction” instead of development since I felt that construction was more “concrete and real.” The software we created had purpose and was very meaningful to business. Nowadays, I see too many IT organizations spending too much time “making software operate” versus “making software meaningful.” And if you can make it meaningful, then there’s business purpose and with real purpose, there’s profits!!! That’s the vision.

I think “Software as a Service” is truly going to revolutionize our industry. Take Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. Do business executives care whether their data is stored in Oracle or SQL Server? Nope. Do they care how long the ETL takes to run every night? Nope. Do they care “what kind of ROLAP, MOLAP, OLAP, or cube you have the data stored in? Nope? Do I know whether my phone call is being made with fiber or copper? Do I know whether my car has a 6-cylinder or 8-cylinder? Well, if I was a gear head, I guess I would….I do care whether it has power steering. My father owned a 1969 Black Dodge Pick-up Truck with a cab on the back. That was the car that I got for dates during college when I was home for the summer. It was transportation. I did care about steering because my arms were falling off trying to drive down a winding country road. Plus, I couldn’t hold hands! Ha!

So, as we look at applications and customer requirements, we should continue to see everything as a “utility” with a easy to access benefit and not “software.” We are an “technology enabling firm” that will produce repeatable solutions vertically and horizontally. That’s only part of our strategy and I wanted to tell you how I answer our valued and loyal customers when they ask “what’s next?”

So, one of our future goals is to provide “data-as-a-service” for our business customers. In doing so, we can allow them to spend their valuable time analyzing the business and not figuring out how to get at the data.

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Written by JohnBostick · Filed Under Business & Leadership, Featured 

Comments

One Response to “Making Software Meaningful”

  1. Nick Wright on March 1st, 2008 2:34 pm

    John,

    Your post reminds me of the following quote which I once read:

    “Customers don’t buy drills, they buy holes. Sell them a hole.”

    Good post.

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