The arrogance of enterprise tech

Notice how many enterprise tech execs smirk about consumer tech and call it “toys” ? Because enterprise tech costs $$$$$ while consumer tech costs $, enterprise tech must be that much more complex – right?

Let’s see how "un-complex" consumer tech is. Apple has built from scratch a retail chain which had 200+ million visitors last year. Its metrics - revenue per square foot of store space, customer satisfaction etc make even long time retail giants drool. amazon, RIM and others have to live with a electronics, displays and other component supply chain which routinely adjusts to major shocks like the Japanese tsunami. Liquidity in the Apple and Android app ecosystems is measured in billions of downloads a year and partners in the hundreds of thousands.   Google, Yahoo! and Facebook have world-class data centers which should have really been designed by IBM, Accenture and other large outsourcers given their premium pricing. Then there is the time to market - product half-lives are a fraction of those in enterprise markets.

Come to think of it – I am glad most enterprise vendors (with exceptions like HP and Microsoft, and Cisco till its recent decision to demphasize consumer markets) stay away from the “toys”. Lord knows they would also be priced at $$$$. As for looks and quality. let's not even go there:)