6 Enduring Truths About Selecting Enterprise Software

5. Technology "suites" are mostly mythical
Software vendors love "suites." Suites mean more revenue, more ownership of the customer, and usually more lock-in. Customers often like at least the idea of suites, hoping they will fulfill our eternal dream of all-in-one products that don't require reams of money.

The problem here is that vendors typically assemble suites via acquisitions designed to impress financial and industry analysts, with technical compatibility an afterthought. That means that the hard work of truly stitching that putative suite together falls to you. Oracle, Salesforce, and Adobe are my particular bêtes noires today, but you've also seen it with IBM, EMC, and the like.

Lesson: Avoid putting all your eggs in one vendor basket, and even if you do, still plan for integration work.

6. Vendor roadmaps are mostly aspirational
At some level, the best technology vendors are dreamers, but many unexpected things happen on the journey of making dreams a reality. Vendor product managers are often inspiring evangelists with impressive PowerPoint decks, but they frequently write functional checks their developers can't cash.

We came up with the nickname of "the roadmap company" for a vendor we evaluated that had a history of consistently overpromising via beautiful diagrams. (Oh, alright, I'll tell you which one: It was OpenText, but even staid Microsoft has fallen victim to this, especially around Office 365.) Incidentally, open-source projects can create mythical roadmaps as well, though they cannot so readily hide when new versions get delayed or redirected.

Lesson: Don't predicate any business plans on functionality that does not yet exist.

What do you think?
You may sense a bit of cynicism in this list, but hopefully some passion, too. As an integrator myself in the 1990s, I got so frustrated witnessing poor technology choices in the enterprise that I decided to shift careers to see if I could do something about it.

Enterprise technology users deserve the right software fit. The right technology and vendor aren't sufficient alone for business success, but they're usually a necessary pre-condition.

But what about you, the enterprise customer.? What lessons have you learned? Chime in using the comments, below.

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