We just watched a series of presentations from Microsoft’s Live Communications Server 2005.
Microsoft must be the world champion in buzzword bingo. Any product, any product, that Microsoft releases promises “increased uptime”, “increased availability” and “enhanced scalability” while “improving performance” and “enabling communication”. If the program doesn’t “enable workflow efficiency”, it “empowers decision-making” or “increases vision”.
In fact, I would love to see a product that actually doesn’t “increase efficiency”. If Microsoft ever launched a product with the market ad saying “this product does not make you smarter, more efficient, scalable, available and resourceful. It just helps you write documents”, I’d be the first to buy it.
Many, many other companies adhere to the same philosophy. I spent repeated attempts to figure out what Borland StarTeam was by reading their white papers. I still don’t know what it does, actually – I never found that out. All I know is that it makes me “more efficient”, and apparently it helps me “increase workflow communication and participation”. I’m pretty sure that goes for Notepad too, if you think about it.
I wonder if there is a part of the world’s population – maybe somewhere up in higher management – that actually reads these white-papers and watches these presentations; and buys into them. “Oh, this program makes our department more efficient. I’ll buy it.”
What if most Fortune 500 companies are like that? Now there’s a scary thought.