I’ve been playing the guitar since I was 12 years old. I was lucky that I have a father who’s also been playing for many years. He has always had a nice collection of Fender and Gibson guitars, and ever since I learned how to play an open E chord, I’ve been lucky enough to be spoiled by the sound and feel of some of the best instruments.
About 10 years ago, I was young and naïve, and was sold by marketing hype on a newer better design for an electric guitar from a company called Parker. The slick glossies that I came across had me salivating at the thought of a new and better way to play my music. Could these things actually make me a better musician?
Alas, once I had a chance to get in to my local music store, and pulled a brand new Parker Fly off the wall, and played the first few bars of Bark at The Moon I was sadly disappointed. To me, it felt like a piece of plastic and really added nothing to my music playing experience. If anything these new super light guitars made my playing worse. This clearly wasn’t making me a better musician.
This was a tremendously important lesson to me. Innovation for the sake of innovation has little value. The world of enterprise software is ripe with vendors making this mistake. The latest example of this to me is Cloud Computing. I think vendors need to take a step back and really ask themselves - Will this help organizations do things in a better or easier way? Virtualization has been so disruptive to the world of enterprise software, that vendors are in a state of catch-up, and most are trying to make up for their deficits with more jargon.
To me vendors need to first ask more questions, and make fewer statements.
Can automation be used to help IT managers improve efficiency without sounding like outsourcing? Can user identity be a point of access control that can be the key to leveraging shared internet resources? I think these are the conversations that need to happen today. How do you readers out there feel about the promises being made by cloud computing? Are we in the midst of a large marketing exercise, or can these new technology help us all to do better business?
I for one don’t believe anyone is in the market for another plastic guitar…
