Humour

Walking the software ramp

T A Balasubramanian analyzes the fashion quotient of ready-to-wear and off-the-rack software

“Yes, software decays. Like any other business, the software world is swayed by its own fickle fashions.”

You, Papyrus Bytewala, the sleepless CIO of Baffle Corporation, are listening to Brooke Bond, your incorrigible software project team head, as he ponderously continues to address your CTO, Danny DeVito, the biped humanoid assigned to your charge. The short, balding, grinning replica of the Hollywood original is turning out to be a model listener.”

“Ah, fickle fashions! Like the seasonal collections from Dior, Hugo, Armani,” grins DeVito. “Here today, gone tomorrow, then back again the day after, eh?”

“That’s right. The IT and fashion industries are kissing cousins. At worst, the technology will die out, maybe to be resurrected a few years later in some other ensemble with another label. At best, the fab wave will find its correct niche—the slot that it should have comfortably filled in the first place. You will often see new technology leap on the software stage with a great deal of hype and hoopla.”

“You have compelling evidence of these, of course?” you say, sounding like a lawyer.

“Indeed, I have,” says Bond, warming up to his theme, as if ready to argue a case. “The fashion industry is sliced up in many ways. There is haute couture, ready-to-wear, and off-the-rack. You may have wondered why you can never figure out what Blue Beam, the great computer giant means by ‘On Command’ computing and how the definition seems to change every time you hear about it. That is because ‘On Command’ is Blue Beam’s haute couture line. People do not really buy couture, as we know. Couture is dreamed up by the marketing departments to make a high style statement, to set the ramp on fire. It is over-the-top, unrealistic—you will find it only on doe-eyed, slender flamenco dancer models wearing wings and impossible creations.…”

“We get the idea, Brooke,” you intercept.

“And it is all intentional,” Bond continues, unperturbed. “Blue Beam couture is all about throwing ideas at customers, and seeing which ones stick. So if it is a new way to get business to try out something edgy and different, Blue Beam keeps throwing out couture ideas from time to time—but they do percolate to the customer without a lot of watering down—if and when it becomes a real product. Do not ever mix up Blue Beam’s couture dazzle with software you can actually use.”

“Of course not,” says DeVito, with a virtuous look.

“Ready-to-wear, on the other hand,” says Bond, “is a diabolically clever marketing ploy because it is not actually ready to wear—unless you happen to be one of the rarest of rare supermodel-size dolls whose dimensions exactly match the original design. For everyone else, ready-to-wear means ‘definitely needs major tailoring work and then maybe it will fit, if you are lucky and ready to starve forever’. In software, the top banner for ready-to-wear is ERP, and software integrators are the tailors. Once they finish their custom fitting, you always hear ‘that looks really good on your business model,’ regardless of how it fits. By the end of this gruelling cut-and-stitch process, your budget, or whatever is left of it, is in tatters, and so is your patience.”

“Which is like the fashion affliction called anorexia,” you suggest, helpfully.

“Thanks, Papyrus,” says Bond, with a gleam in his eye. “Now as far as I know, the fashion industry is honest about whether their goods are ready-to-wear or off-the-rack. But with software, it becomes the customer’s unenviable job to figure this out.”

“Unless there is a helpful system integrator lurking around,” you add.

“That’s right,” says Bond. “This brings us to off-the-rack. Here, the undisputed sultan is Microshop. While this seen-everywhere label might dabble in ready-to-wear and occasionally in couture, their primary speciality is off-the-rack. Now, that is not necessarily an evil beyond imagination—as some from the rival Leanox open house of street fashion might allege. Off-the-rack may not be glamorous, but it is most certainly profitable, since they can make millions of clones from one piece and populate the world with it. They do have some glitter on their current obsession, Mista, but it is still just a lot of shine.”

“So, what does all of this add up to?” says DeVito.

“Well, if you are a software customer, you have to figure out what your fashion house is good at doing—not what they are good at pushing, which might be all airy-fairy and vaporous—like haute couture. If you do buy that, you are a wonderful snob—a fashionista. You get a package of beautiful ideas, not implementation. And, true to form, the ideas will change as soon as you blink. When you buy ready-to-wear you would need services along with it—the key question is: how much? And when you buy off-the-rack, you get a sturdy, homely wearable piece—and it is not going to make you ‘attain exclusiveness’—become the belle of the party, so to speak. It would be what is ‘in style’—what everyone is draping on their desktops. But most of the time, customers are greedy. They want a bit of both. They want to be on the bandwagon, and they want to be off it, in their one-of-a-kind limousine.”

“This gets better and better,” says DeVito, cheerfully. “Humans are crazy. You desire to be ‘in style’ and you also want to ‘attain exclusiveness’ with the same product?”

“That’s right,” nods Bond. “But not at the same time. Duckbill & Goose—the most definitive software fashion-show paparazzi—talks of the ‘hype cycle’ which proposes that every technology moves to the ‘peak of inflated expectations’ where everyone thinks it is miraculous and wants it exclusively. It then drops into the ‘trough of disillusionment’ as people get jaded with the hyped-up vapour and under-delivery. Finally, it reaches the ‘plateau of productivity’ or the bandwagon, as people start using it for real benefit.”

“And the fashion business goes the same way?”

“Exactly. Bell-bottom pants are a great example of how the fashion industry follows the hype cycle. They shot into popularity and were outrageous in proportions. Then they dropped off the face of the earth. Only now have they reached the ‘plateau of productivity’ in a much more functional—and subdued—form than they started. There have been many more—miniskirts, hot pants, Farrah Fawcett hairdos, fatness and thinness and so on—they have all come and gone as either the thing to wear, or the thing to be. We tend to look back on fashions past with either fond nostalgia or a twinge of embarrassment.”

“I can relate to that,” says DeVito. “I had a goofy pair of bell-bottoms in my early days.”

“In the software world, it is not that different,” you say. “Take WAP, for example. An over-blown technology that vanished overnight. The initial hype suggested to both punters and content providers that WAP would provide ‘the Internet on your mobile phone’. The reality, at that time, was like playing tennis in a cupboard—a pathetic text-only display dribbling on tiny-screened phones. But now, with more advanced technologies, we have Internet on the phone coming back.”

“The more things change, the more they remain the same,” says Bond, with a sigh.

“Oh, that is priceless,” says DeVito. “So all I have to do is to go down my memory lane to see the future.”

“Just think twice before you jump on the ramp, Danny,” you say, waving a finger. “Ask yourself—is this new technology going to look like body piercing on your resume in a few years?”