New applications developed under the all-in-one cloud umbrella (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.) have several responsibilities that are often referred by IT specialists: They need to be more agile, create new markets and reach far more customers, help lowering Total cost of ownership (TCO), create new business models, etc, etc, etc. than their Off-the-shelf older cousins.
In this large umbrella I’m specially interested in business applications that are used by normal users (non techies). These type of applications have another responsibility: They need to change the way non-IT users perceive and use business software.
I state this because when I talk to friends, coworkers and even family about their use of business software I always have the feeling that they hate working with them (ERPs for example). These users too often become angry users that avoid working with software for as long as they can. Many times they tell me that these business aplications are difficult to use, have too many options (that clutter the user interface) and fail too many times. Some of them even have found ways to taken advantage from software bugs so they can get around some limitations in this systems.
Besides being an IT guy, I’m also an user and to be honest too many times I have the same feelings.
In the cloud ecosystem we already see some players that serve as a good example of transforming these angry users in happy ones. One of them is 37 signals. Their release of basecamp some years ago helped users to move from big systems (like Microsoft Project) to a clean and simpler approach of “less is more” in the project management area.
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