In business terms, an enterprise is a large group of people that can come together to form an effective business on a large scale. In fact it is more like a grouping of groups. Technology has been instrumental in helping larger and larger groups form teams that work well together. Operations software that is developed within the organization itself has the potential to be a highly strategic aspect of effective team development.
Imagine a company that designs and builds gyroscopes. Gyroscopes today are in demand as the technical uses for them has increased, and at the same time, a strong market exists for smaller, faster and more accurate technology. At a certain point the company will look to enterprise software to help manage their design and manufacturing processes. But these processes are inherent, and custom, to the company; they are what enables the company to compete in the markets it chooses. For example, if the company is based in the U.S., they may work with dozens of overseas vendors. Making these relationships work well is likely a strategic aspect of the company’s value proposition, and it’s natural the company will look for enterprise software to optimize this aspect of its business. No COTS product provides this strategic benefit, but if the company chooses the product stack well, it can be extended, and developed, to precisely meet the strategic requirements of that enterprise. And, the most qualified people to do the work of the customization are ideally the people that know the most about the unique business domain- the people that are in the organization chart of the company.
Operation software development is the long tail of software written for the enterprise, build on the ERP, PLM, OSS etc. frameworks from SAP, Oracle, Redhat, and many others. Depending on industry vertical, this software is written more and less generically, but does not immediately meet the need of any (non-commodity based) company. Instead it must configured and customized to meet and develop with any particular industry name. Generally, the vendor steps in to offer consultant based software development services including Business Analysts, Requirements Developers, and Software Developers; it is an expensive but still marginally worthwhile effort. But, instead, the enterprise may choose to develop the custom software extensions of the commercial or open source framework. This enables the company to save the overhead (and profit) of the vendor, and in some cases much more importantly, the intellectual capital created by the effort to produce and manage the custom software; this may include IP created in any phase of the SDLC, from concept to installation.
This is the value proposition of operation software developed within the enterprise.
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