Enterprise Vendors: Big Hat, No Cattle

From MIT Technology Review:

“"Customers are coming to us and saying 'I'd like a Watson,' " says Stephen Gold, IBM's director of worldwide marketing for Watson. Eventually, that might be possible, but first they need to have the right data sets for Watson to operate on. Watson acquires knowledge by digesting piles of text data, and many businesses simply don't have it on hand, or don't have it organized in the right way. Alternatively, a company may not currently operate in a way that would make a question-answering computer very useful. Instead, IBM can offer its more established products and services, such as more basic data storage, processing, and business analytics.”

Seriously after a year of waiting for Watson applications?

Not just picking on IBM, but it sure would be nice to see an enterprise vendor introduce a product which gets 20 million users like Google+ got in its first month, 25 million iPads sold in its first year. Kinect, CityVille, Kindle – take your pick of other successful consumer products.

Instead in enterprise world we get years of hype, drips of early customer adoption, and then forced marches of majorities of customer bases. Oh, and the usual excuse – enterprise stuff is so much more complex.

I am going to let Randy Newman take over…

Big snake, no rattle….Big boat, no paddle…Big horse, no saddle