How does your enterprise solution stack up?

It seems like everyone who sells software to businesses these days is selling an “enterprise solution.” The phrase has become so ubiquitous that the notion of what an enterprise solution actually entails is not always clear.

To some, the phrase is simply a euphemism for “Web-based” software. Others might suggest that any software used by a large number of people within a company qualifies as an enterprise solution.

In reality, a true enterprise solution is much more than that. It’s not just about how many people use the solution, or whether it works on the Web, or even what features the solution actually provides to users. What qualifies an offering as a good enterprise solution is how well it harmonizes with the relevant technical, business and IT infrastructures of the enterprise. And, of course, beyond the purely technical criteria, you use to judge an enterprise solution are the vital human elements including training, support and the provision of services.

No two organizations have precisely the same set of requirements for large internal software deployments, but at the core of any evaluation of an enterprise-level solution are a number of “must haves” that will help ensure a successful and productive solution.

Below are a number of essential points you should include on your “enterprise solution checklist.”

Flexible Global Licensing Model

An enterprise solution should have global licensing that is flexible and value-oriented. An enterprise with a globally distributed user base needs the flexibility to float licenses between users in different time zones to get the most value from its licenses.

In large companies, the number of users of a particular product can vary sharply over time. Having a fixed number of licenses for a given product places the enterprise at risk of getting license denials if they underestimate their peak usage requirements.

No one wants to overbuy to accommodate usage spikes. When many products draw licenses from a common pool of units (or tokens), the likelihood of license denials drops because it is less likely that the demand for all products will peak simultaneously in a diverse product suite. In a very value-oriented licensing model, no additional units are drawn for simultaneous usage of interactive products by a single user on a single CPU.

Unit-based licensing models that enable users to access any product in a solution suite provide the most flexibility and value to the enterprise. But beware of restrictions. If new products released by a provider don’t draw from the same license pool, that provider is not allowing you to leverage your units to the fullest.

The more products that draw from the same unit pool, the higher the realized value. The licensing costs for a good enterprise solution must be predictable. If the licensing model changes unfairly or requires you to “re-buy” software that you’ve already purchased, your provider probably doesn’t have your best interest in mind.

Responsive Global Support

If you ask any IT professional, he will tell you that good support from the provider is a defining characteristic of a good enterprise solution. If you deploy a solution globally, you should expect local support in every region in which you deploy.

The support organization should also reach all of your enterprise partners that use the same solution in their environments. The local support groups should be backed by ready application engineers who can offer you assistance in your application area in addition to teaching you strategies for using the software most effectively.



Interoperability with other enterprise

Technical computing environments are complex systems of interconnected processes, data flows, repositories, grid engines, hardware and a plethora of other infrastructure actors. They must all talk via interfaces, and these interfaces should adhere to open standards as much as possible. Look for solutions that don’t trap your data in proprietary formats, robbing you of the ownership of your own data.

If your solution is potentially resource-intensive meaning that it consumes large amounts of disk, memory or CPUs, then you ought to judge whether it’s utilizing those always-scarce resources efficiently.

The virtualization of distributed system resources into centrally managed queues that balance resources according to enterprise policies is known as grid computing. A good enterprise solution ought to take advantage of grid computing by externalizing computational work in separate processes that can be managed by the grid ware.

Adherence to open standards for licensing, scripting, database interfacing, Web services, user authentication, file formats, user interface conventions and others is a hallmark of a true enterprise solution.

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Extensibility and flexibility

Few enterprise solutions capture all your requirements out of the box. Often, they must be extended and adapted to model your particular processes.

You should judge the extensibility of any solution not only by the programmability and configurability of the system, which should be comprehensive, but also on the maintainability and lifespan of those extensions.

Is your provider going to pull the rug out from under you after you invest in creating vertical solutions on his system? You need to have confidence that those extensions you built will run for years to come without burdensome migration when you upgrade.

Consider also the flexibility of the solution architecture. Can component applications and modules from within a provider’s solution be easily combined in new ways within your own proprietary systems?

Many enterprises create their own process “pipelines”, sometimes fully automated, that comprise components brought together from a variety of providers. A large monolithic solution limits your options and ultimately reduces the value of a solution.

Deployment and Maintenance

Depending on the complexity of an enterprise solution, its installation and deployment can be labor intensive and error-prone, or it can be as easy as running an automated installer. The solution provider who puts the effort into developing flexible and intelligent installation and upgrade tools is a better partner than one that lobs a “tar ball” and a 50-page “readme” file at the system administrator — placing the deployment burden on valuable corporate IT resources.

For very large and complex enterprise solutions, a provision for incremental upgrades and selective patches must be available. These incremental upgrades and patches should be quick to install, requiring minimal downtime for the applications. Ideally, patches and upgrades should be available through the Web, and an installation inventory mechanism should profile your current installation configuration at any time.

Attracts and fosters partner solution providers

All enterprises require a network of partners to provide the solutions they need. No one provider can be expected to produce all the best-in-class components or satisfy all niche requirements for a complex enterprise solution. But a primary solution provider should be expected to attract and foster solution partners that add capabilities above the primary offering.

It’s worth understanding how a provider’s partner program works, as well. Some primary providers create a “controlled economy” of partner solutions in which they solely determine what partner solutions can exist and what feature sets they have. This eliminates all competitive pressure on the partners and tends to drive costs up since it’s a mini-monopoly. Good partner programs foster a free market of secondary solution providers in which the enterprise benefits.

Every enterprise has its own particular infrastructure — and so has differing requirements for the solutions deployed within them. Hopefully, some of the points listed here will help you round out your checklist when providing requirements to your partners or when evaluating how well a solution will fit in your enterprise.

Anyone who evaluates software for deployment within an enterprise, large or small, has a lot to consider beyond the specific features of the solution. Equal in importance to the technological merits of a solution is the business relationship with the provider.

The enterprise and its systems are endlessly evolving, and the relationship between the enterprise and the provider must be a dynamic and collaborative one. That relationship will have as much bearing on the long-term success of the solution as the technology itself. You need to know you can count on your partners to protect your interests as well as their own.

(The author is vice president of product development, Altair Engineering, Inc. The views expressed in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of CIOL)