zlacker

>>deofoo+(OP)
Good, I will with great pleasure now reiterate my point about people now producing their own code, even complex stuff, rather than downloading potentially malicious and foreign code. Which as a tendency threatens ALL clumsy big ERP service providers selling you SAAS.

Go ahead - I'm ready to be down-voted again and again until folks realize it is inevitable, as is inevitable that many companies in the area of business software are going down down down.

>>larodi+eX8
I think the real question here isn't whether roll your own software will replace large complex 'configurable' systems, but whether companies that roll their own will replace the companies that don't.

ie are the efficiency gains of having something that's exactly tailored to you enough to create a competitive advantage.

It's back to the old idea - of software eating the world.

So for example in the UK - there is a relatively new 'energy' company called Octopus - it's grown and grown and finally overtaken the old established players.

In reality it's not an energy company - it's a software company - that used it's expertise in software to overtake it's energy supplier competitors - it was able to provide innovative products in the market because it controlled it's own software - rather than 'big vendor says no'.

I think it's telling that the founder originally left school at 16 to write computer games, before coming back to do a degree etc.

ie the question is - for any particular industry what's the benefit of custom software. Does a bakery having it's own give it enough of an advantage?

>>DrScie+xE9
I'm a bit bitter about Octopus, although they did rescue us from the horrors of our previous supplier their insistence on us getting "smart" meters that can't then function as smart meters because of poor signal and are actually more difficult to read than our old meters has left me not hugely impressed with them.

>>arethu+tK9
Wasn't the smart meter rollout ( and the poor choice of hardware etc ) a central government initiative. Octopus merely used their software agility to make the most of it.

ie not sure issues with the smart meters themselves is the fault of Octopus - as the meter standards are set centrally so they can still work if you switch supplier?

Back to another old adage,

"people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware"

>>DrScie+XR9
Octopus pressured us into getting smart meters and they're the folks I am speaking to to get the things to work so as far as I'm concerned they're on the hook.

Mind you, I couldn't help noticing that the meters themselves are owned by a leasing company... (there is a plate on each one explaining this).

>>arethu+vY9
Again I think that's mostly the governments fault - they are setting mandatory smart meter rollout targets for the energy suppliers every year.