When vendors claim their solutions are ‘enterprise ready’, the initial enthusiasm often gives way to disappointment as marketing claims collide with real world practicality. Perhaps the technology works well in controlled greenfield environments but struggles with legacy system integration. Maybe those impressive reference customers had extra special vendor support not available to everyone. Or you might discover that going it alone involves spending time and money acquiring a whole new set of skills.
The frustrating part for CIOs though, isn’t that newer solutions tend have limitations, it’s just that they want vendors to be upfront about them. They’d rather real world issues were acknowledged, and have an open and objective discussion about the implications and practical workarounds.
This disconnect between vendor optimism and operational reality creates lasting problems for everyone. Early adopters develop persistent biases that blind them to later improvements, while vendors find their credibility damaged long after they’ve fixed the initial shortcomings and issues.
In a recent survey of UK-based CIOs, we explored what really determines whether an emerging technology is ready for mainstream business deployment. We call this ‘mainstream readiness’, and it’s about more than whether the technology works. It encompasses everything from skills availability and integration capabilities to regulatory compliance and ecosystem maturity.
Dale is a co-founder of Freeform Dynamics, and today runs the company. As part of this, he oversees the organisation’s industry coverage and research agenda, which tracks technology trends and developments, along with IT-related buying behaviour among mainstream enterprises, SMBs and public sector organisations.
