Enterprise
Software is all about Scalability- Liemandt
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Joe Liemandt, CEO and founder of Trilogy, a leading
enterprise software solution company is more of a maverick visionary than a straightjacketed corporate leader one usually associate
with. He quit |
His business model of sharing business value benefits with the customer
rather than getting paid for software and services has made Trilogy's business
model quite unique in the big bad world of enterprise software. Ramdas S caught up with Joe Liemandt
and discussed the element of enterprise software development and other issues
in the software world.
You have been in the business of software development for the enterprise
space for over a decade. What differentiates enterprise software to
non-enterprise software? How do you go about doing enterprise software
development?
The simplest answer is when you develop software that gets used by large
enterprise organizations, and that software is usually regarded as enterprise
software. If the software is targeted at consumers or smaller organizations
then that is non-enterprise. To illustrate it better consider you are making an
application like a financial accounting package. When you market the same for a
consumer you do not think about offering a multi-currency support. You are
happy with making the software work for a US Dollar or an Indian Rupee.
However when you talk about developing a software for an enterprise customer
such as Ford, which sells cars in hundred countries, and sells hundreds of
models of vehicles, with thousands of different specifications and options, you
need to start thinking beyond a single currency.
You need to think about how the system will work when orders are getting logged
in multiple currencies. You need to think of six million customers walking in
to buy, check, and know about their cars. Hence you design a system that is far
more complex.
More importantly, you try designing a system that is far more flexible and much
more scaleable. Scalability is one of the key issues of developing software for
the enterprise. Consider British Airways, which needs to schedule flights, and
sell tickets to millions of travelers a week. They do that using our software, and their systems have to be up and running. And
all transactions need to be processed. And enterprise applications need to
scale up very fast. So you design applications that can scale up fast.
How do you assure scalability in the applications you design or develop?
Good design build on sound architecture ensures you scaleable software. Trilogy
has developed several patented algorithms that also improve the software system
performance. In a typical enterprise solution, you try to squeeze out the last
bit of performance from your system, by using the right technologies.
What all software technologies do you use extensively?
Generally we deliver solutions based on our customers' infrastructure and their
requirements. But most of our solutions are build
around Java and most of our customers are comfortable with J2EE platform today.
But software subsystems will differ from customer to customer. Hence we assure
compatibility. For example we have customers who run DB2, SQL Server as well as
Oracle. And our software is optimized to work on these platforms.
Do you use scripting languages such as Python or Perl
in developing software?
We do use Perl in some cases. But we use Java for
most of mission critical applications.
Why?
There are several reasons. Our developers are very comfortable with Java and
are very good with it. But more importantly for enterprise software development
performance is key issue, and Java scores over
scripting languages when it comes to squeezing performance out of your system.
This is a big plus point for Java. That is why for mission critical
applications Java is preferred over other options.
What about Open Source technologies? How comfortable are your enterprise
customers when they look at Open Source?
If you look at Linux, I think many of our customers have moved from the days of
experimenting with Linux in pilot projects and are moving their servers on to
Linux. The most exciting thing happening on hardware side is 64 bit computing
on Linux. We have customers getting terrific performance out of AMD's 64-bit
platform running Linux with a few gigs of RAM and terabytes of space. This is
delivering performance that is much better than the most powerful mainframes of
yester years and costs just a fraction of the cost of a mainframe.
You have solutions running on AMD's 64-bit architecture…?
Yes. Today one of our customers is moving hundreds of their servers on AMD's
64-bit platform and Suse Linux. Our software will run
on these servers. (reverting back to Open Source
discussion…).
Some of our customers are also experimenting with Open Source and recommend us
to use Open Source tools for deploying solutions.
We see that trend growing as customers see value in using some of the Open
Source tools and technologies. But in an enterprise things are lot
different.
It takes years and not quarters, months or days for decisions and deployment.
They evaluate technology and new products for a long time before deciding on
actual deployment, and then it can be a year or two for a complete
deployment.
Most of the other Open Source products are still not deployed in the mission
critical applications. But in the coming years we may see much better
acceptance.
Your business model is very unique. Can you elaborate how it works?
Traditionally an enterprise software company bills for the software and
services deployed. Even after this investment the customer cannot be sure of
return of investment. Hence we tell our customer to pay us only after they get
their ROI. If you do not get any return on investment in our software and
services then you do not pay us. But if you get it then you pay a percent of
the business value generated out of our solution.
Tying revenues to the customer's ROI is a way of moving up the value chain. We
figure out how much the business value is, by using some business success
metrics, which the customer agrees on before signing up. We end up making more
money for the solution rendered and that is a fair business practice.
It is not very difficult to convince, because of almost customers do pay
commissions in their business. Car manufactures pay commissions to their
dealers and reps, and airline companies to their agents.
We also are paid a percent of the business value generated. And this also helps
us building relations with customer that will run into decades and not months
or years.
But automation is never a solution for a bad process or practice within an
organization. How do you deal in such cases?
We do advise our customer, and will say no to automation of a process if it
does not make business value. We make money only if the solution generates
business value. Hence our solutions are definitely high on value chain. This
helps the customer too. We do get involved in strategic consulting.
You have been developing software in
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