Using On Demand Software is like Having Kids
Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 June 2006 10:28 Written by Steve Tuesday, 20 June 2006 10:28
When I had my first kid, I realized that I had to stop my life periodically to help him get through trying times. When he has a cold, I have to get up at night with him, hold him all day, and cancel anything scheduled. While not a relatively large percentage of my time, his needy times really knocks my wife and I out of our normal routine, and we have very little control over when it happens.
When I had my second kid, I quickly realized that she has her own periods of need, and they hardly ever coincide with the needy times for my first kid. So, we’re up all night with her and then the next week we’re at home with him, and then she starts getting up at 5 AM and he starts going to bed at 10 PM.
Because their needs are completely independent, they don’t overlap, and we end up being knocked out of our routine a lot more than we had expected based on our experience with one kid. And it always happens at an inconvenient time.
When you integrate web-based software services, their outages usaully don’t overlap. When your CRM is down, your email marketing service is up. When your event registration system is having a problem, your website is up, and vice versa. Your work becomes dependent on multiple systems, each with their own downtime–it isn’t a huge percentage of time, but it sure knocks you off your work routine. And it always happens right before a deadline.
As I start integrating more systems together into a cohesive system, I look at those exhausted parents with 4 kids I see at the park and I wonder what the hell I’m doing. The only saving grace is that if my CRM service is down, I don’t have to stay up all night nursing it back to health…
So are you saying that using on-demand CRM is like having one kid – at least one – you don’t have to help get through a trying time?
Actually based on experiences this weekend (similar deadlines and parenting scenarios to yours, I’m guessing), I’d disagree with your last line. If it’s something important, you still have to stay up and monitor until it’s getting healthy again, so you can wrap it up and get on with life sooner…
With on-demand, there’s no nursing. You can watch soccer while you wait for it to come back to health, and curse the folks in San Francisco while you wait.
Last night I was thinking about an RSS feed off trust Salesforce.com that would fire when the instance icons change color…
that wouldn’t be of much use considering they change color days after the outage occurred
…and then another one when the historical status magically goes back to green once folks are focused on the latest status.