Consulting for a Small Construction Company
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That feels like an ad hominen attack on client-server architecture. "People who maintain client-server applications are bad, ergo client-server is bad". We know nothing about the providers in this case or what their level of competence is.
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But I would definitely say two things that I think are big factors and build on the thought processes that you've had:
- Software that is modern and/or designed well has the best chance of being currently maintained, and being build well. It's not likely at all that software would be fundamentally poorly designed and then coded well. That software uses a modern design certainly does not imply that it is well made. But at least it gives a realistic chance of being so.
- Using non-industry specific software is very often the best way to go. It's actually pretty rare that software unique to the industry is very useful. Companies kind of imagine this, in many cases, and ignore standard options from big names (like MS themselves) that might do the job just as well but have tons of support and security. And often a fraction of the cost.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Using non-industry specific software is very often the best way to go. It's actually pretty rare that software unique to the industry is very useful. Companies kind of imagine this, in many cases, and ignore standard options from big names (like MS themselves) that might do the job just as well but have tons of support and security. And often a fraction of the cost.
Sometimes. As a general rule, I'd say 80% of your company should be run as a vanilla company (and hence use vanilla software), and 20% should be bespoke/unique. The 80% that is vanilla keeps costs down and efficiency up, and the 20% that is unique provides your competitive advantage.
Identifying which is which is the tricky part, and a large part of my job. Is this unique process/workflow used because it provides a true competitive advantage ("our customers choose us because none of our competitors offer this service"), or is it because "we've always done it like this" and offers no value? In my experience, it's normally the latter, but sometimes the former.
Without more info, I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that AJ's clients are simply idiots.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Without more info, I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that AJ's clients are simply idiots.
It's the reaction, not the choice, that I'm primarily concerned about. I see it constantly, businesses that make a choice without engaging IT, IT questions it and they provide a flimsy, almost surely false, excuse as to why neither they nor IT are to question a seemingly odd decision. Can there be a case where a C/S application is actually the only and/or best choice and their needs are very specific and this provides competitive advantage? Sure. It is likely? Not at all. If it were true, would they be in an industry where no one else has this problem and/or give such a flimsy reason for it? Almost certainly not.
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I've worked with a few small'ish industry businesses (alcohol distributors and HVAC distributors) They both used a product produced by a vendor inside those industries as their 20% uniqueness - both packages are just horrible from a design/support perspective, both required local admin and damn near impossible to make run as a non admin.
These software packages are so unique though, that I don't know if a third party software solution would really work for them, without going to extreme lengths to import the data from each vendor, then create the interdependence between components as the current solution provides.
It's frustrating to look at what some of these places have to deal with.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Carnival-Boy said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
A client-server solution isn't necessarily crap, or insecure.
The architecture is inherently crappy and less secure than alternatives, though. Can it be made secure, yes, but it takes more work and can't get as good. But can it not be crappy? not really.
You say this, but I am sure that you realize most of the internet upon which we spend our time is written in a client-server architecture?
Our web Browsers request/send information from a web server. Our chat clients send/request information to/from a chat server... When you add a database into the mix, the web server becomes a database client, and requests info from and sends info to the database server...
Even in the case of an API type setup, there's a client and server somewhere in the mix.
What makes it so crappy? Do you have any ideas of better ways to do it?
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I've worked with a few small'ish industry businesses (alcohol distributors and HVAC distributors) They both used a product produced by a vendor inside those industries as their 20% uniqueness - both packages are just horrible from a design/support perspective, both required local admin and damn near impossible to make run as a non admin.
These software packages are so unique though, that I don't know if a third party software solution would really work for them, without going to extreme lengths to import the data from each vendor, then create the interdependence between components as the current solution provides.
It's frustrating to look at what some of these places have to deal with.
Just because the package is unique does not mean that it is useful, though. I've never heard anyone claim "competitive advantage" or "improved efficiency" or "improved profits" only ever "uniqueness" which is what people would say when they need a reason but don't have one for why they chose it. Uniqueness alone isn't an advantage.
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@dafyre said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
You say this, but I am sure that you realize most of the internet upon which we spend our time is written in a client-server architecture?
No, it's not
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@dafyre said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Our web Browsers request/send information from a web server.
That's not what a client/server architecture is, though.
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Straight static web pages, yes, that's client server. It's also non-critical. It's just file serving.
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Web applications (not file serving) is almost exclusively multi-tier and has been almost forever...
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Web applications (not file serving) is almost exclusively multi-tier and has been almost forever...
Read the first sentence...
"In software engineering, multitier architecture (often referred to as n-tier architecture) is a client–server architecture in which presentation, application processing, and data management functions are physically separated. The most widespread use of multitier architecture is the three-tier architecture."
It doesn't matter if there's 1 tier, or 10 tiers... Something is a client, and something is a server.
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@dafyre said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Web applications (not file serving) is almost exclusively multi-tier and has been almost forever...
Read the first sentence...
"In software engineering, multitier architecture (often referred to as n-tier architecture) is a client–server architecture in which presentation, application processing, and data management functions are physically separated. The most widespread use of multitier architecture is the three-tier architecture."
It doesn't matter if there's 1 tier, or 10 tiers... Something is a client, and something is a server.
That's not what we are discussing though, we are talking about the common usage of the term client-server. Which is just a client talking directly to the data source. That's what people use the term to mean.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Carnival-Boy said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
"The solution you want, which is perfect for your needs, uses slightly out-dated technology, therefore please choose a different, inferior and more expensive solution"
Isn't that putting IT needs before business needs?
The two should be one and the same. And "slightly" outdated is totally missing the point. This is technology that was ridiculous to have been making since the late 1990s. Two decades of not bringing it up to date means that there is incredible business risk involved (based on averages.) This suggests that either we have unmaintaned code, a company that actively doesn't care about the needs of their clients or, most of the time, a company selling an old product that no longer has developers and they can't fix it if they need to.
You are making a wild assumption that this is superior or cheaper than modern, well made, supported software. I've never once seen that be true in a situation like this. What I've pointed out above is that companies that say that there is no other option (especially companies is super standard industries like this) is that they didn't look for options and just chose one bad one.
This is technology that many companies use today. There is not a damned thing wrong with a client-server model itself. It is all kinds of wrong for this situation, but you are making more blanket statements with no basis in fact.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I've worked with a few small'ish industry businesses (alcohol distributors and HVAC distributors) They both used a product produced by a vendor inside those industries as their 20% uniqueness - both packages are just horrible from a design/support perspective, both required local admin and damn near impossible to make run as a non admin.
These software packages are so unique though, that I don't know if a third party software solution would really work for them, without going to extreme lengths to import the data from each vendor, then create the interdependence between components as the current solution provides.
It's frustrating to look at what some of these places have to deal with.
Just because the package is unique does not mean that it is useful, though. I've never heard anyone claim "competitive advantage" or "improved efficiency" or "improved profits" only ever "uniqueness" which is what people would say when they need a reason but don't have one for why they chose it. Uniqueness alone isn't an advantage.
In these cases, it's not about uniqueness, it's about functionality. Hand coding their own solution, assuming they could get the raw data to put into their own solution would cost many times what it costs to just buy the product from the vendor. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you are driving at.
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I've worked with a few small'ish industry businesses (alcohol distributors and HVAC distributors) They both used a product produced by a vendor inside those industries as their 20% uniqueness - both packages are just horrible from a design/support perspective, both required local admin and damn near impossible to make run as a non admin.
These software packages are so unique though, that I don't know if a third party software solution would really work for them, without going to extreme lengths to import the data from each vendor, then create the interdependence between components as the current solution provides.
It's frustrating to look at what some of these places have to deal with.
Just because the package is unique does not mean that it is useful, though. I've never heard anyone claim "competitive advantage" or "improved efficiency" or "improved profits" only ever "uniqueness" which is what people would say when they need a reason but don't have one for why they chose it. Uniqueness alone isn't an advantage.
In these cases, it's not about uniqueness, it's about functionality. Hand coding their own solution, assuming they could get the raw data to put into their own solution would cost many times what it costs to just buy the product from the vendor. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you are driving at.
What I'm saying is that lots of companies make this claim that their businesses are "so unique" in their industry that they can't use standard tools (MS Office, QuickBooks, Sharepoint, what have you) but instead need "apps made for their industry." In some cases, it is certainly true, medical offices for example. But for many businesses, it's simply a marketing tactic. Lots of these companies claim uniqueness even though it turns out their special software does nothing special.
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Example... I've seen undertakers use custom software that costs an arm and a leg, is written like crap, doesn't work reliably and has all kinds of insane dependencies. Did it do something special to warrant using it? No. Excel would have been better.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Example... I've seen undertakers use custom software that costs an arm and a leg, is written like crap, doesn't work reliably and has all kinds of insane dependencies. Did it do something special to warrant using it? No. Excel would have been better.
Sure, in there case Excel might have worked, even though they would have to manually import all of their inventory into then create the flows (logic) that allows what part to go with what casket, etc).
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@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Example... I've seen undertakers use custom software that costs an arm and a leg, is written like crap, doesn't work reliably and has all kinds of insane dependencies. Did it do something special to warrant using it? No. Excel would have been better.
Sure, in there case Excel might have worked, even though they would have to manually import all of their inventory into then create the flows (logic) that allows what part to go with what casket, etc).
Right. But for the average business... this works. I'm not saying Excel specifically. But there are tons of standard tools developers for normal businesses. And they work for the majority of them. And the smaller you get, the more they make sense. And those industries that "need" special case software, there is almost always good software available. There are exceptions, but everyone thinks that their industry is the special case.
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@Dashrender said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Example... I've seen undertakers use custom software that costs an arm and a leg, is written like crap, doesn't work reliably and has all kinds of insane dependencies. Did it do something special to warrant using it? No. Excel would have been better.
Sure, in there case Excel might have worked, even though they would have to manually import all of their inventory into then create the flows (logic) that allows what part to go with what casket, etc).
Right. But for the average business... this works. I'm not saying Excel specifically. But there are tons of standard tools developers for normal businesses. And they work for the majority of them. And the smaller you get, the more they make sense. And those industries that "need" special case software, there is almost always good software available. There are exceptions, but everyone thinks that their industry is the special case.
I really wish that was the case for the HVAC group I'm working with now - sadly it's not.
