A friend of mine sent me a link to a page that manages to equate the revolutions spreading across the Middle East to the claimed revolutions included in the latest versions of an ERP system - Pronto.
Who’d a thought it.
All we have to do is hand out copies of Pronto to dictators everywhere and soon democracy will flourish. It will flourish, basically, because the dictators will be so busy pouring resources into managing and running the ERP system that they won’t have the people to stifle dissent and murder the opposition. That and the fact that the maintenance fees will bankrupt their regimes.
I know Pronto. I’ve worked at a few sites where they use it.
Its an okay piece of work. Is it able to contribute to global democracy and freedom of the oppressed? I think that’s a bit of a stretch. The fact that the piece was written by the Managing Director of Pronto may go some way towards explaining the reason why he’d want to find a way to tie a growing social revolution to his software.
The funny thing is that he also mentions something about Mercedes-Benz doing some sort of ‘lock in’ thing with mobile phones and saying that “they offered hardwired mounts that supported only certain types of mobile phone. This was not a popular offering, and showed how Mercedes had gotten it so wrong when it came to mobile phones. The company did not understand how the mobile was becoming a communications infrastructure that empowers social connectivity. Phones then evolved quickly so that people could use them to express themselves in many ways, making hard-wiring a bad idea.”
He goes on to say “I make and sell business software, and in my world, there is a similar transformation going on today and I believe that in the future it will be regarded as a very profound change. That change is similar to the revolutions in the Middle East. This isn’t hype — it is reality, and the smart companies are already actively transforming”.
Funny thing is Pronto is one of the worst offenders at this sort of thing.
I’d just like to point out to David Jackman that by refusing to free up Pronto from the Wintel centric thin client they use and move to a more open, democratic, platform independent client, like, say a browser (or ideally any browser) he is no better than the regimes that democratising technology is helping to overthrow.
He’s quite proud of the fact that Pronto is a Wintel only platform - it appears that technological democratisation, as far as Pronto is concerned is a good thing to speak of, but not actually execute. Sounds a lot like the statements made by the, now, deposed leaders of Egypt and Tunisia where they’d say - yes we are making steps towards democracy.
Since Mr. Jackman wants to tie his software to the Arab Spring it may be good for him to listen to a suggestion from the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutolglu who said “Leaders of other countries must be aware of the fact that they will be in power as long as they satisfy the demands of the people.”
I know for a fact he has quashed discussion of Mac and browser clients for Pronto by saying, in effect, ‘the customer base doesn’t want it’, despite long discussions about running Pronto on platforms other than Wintel by that same customer base.
This whole puff piece is ego gone mad. Pronto Dimensions is the Arab Spring of enterprise software!?
I’m sure Larry Ellison will quake in his Sperry Topsiders.
Linking the updates in the new version of Pronto to the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia sounds like the blathering of a man who doesn’t hear ‘no’ often enough and cheapens the sacrifices made with blood and lives in both of those countries and continues in Libya and Syria.
His article sounds like a cheap attempt to gain marketing mileage from years of suffering that people in these countries have endured.
Mr. Jackman - let my people go!
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