Relax Mom, It’s Not Your Fault (This Time)

Orig­i­nally posted on Octo­ber 22nd, 2007 over at Progress.

I’ve noticed that, like Rudy Giu­liani, I still pur­chase my clothes a few sizes too big. While I can’t speak for Rudy, some­where deep inside I’ve been con­di­tioned to think that when I buy clothes, I have to buy them big and “grow into them.” I ratio­nal­ize this by enjoy­ing the fact that I can go shop­ping just once every few years.

It’s a silly eccen­tric­ity that, accord­ing to Freud, I can just blame on my mother. I’m not going to grow any more and really don’t need to buy pants that will fit per­fectly in a few years. I need pants that fit now. Besides, even if I were still grow­ing, by the time my clothes fit prop­erly, I’d prob­a­bly need a wardrobe update to account for new stan­dards styles and busi­ness require­ments per­sonal preferences.

I know, I bore you with my neu­ro­sis. SOA What?

You see (lie down on the couch if you need), you buy soft­ware the way I buy clothes.

1. You buy more than you need
2. You fig­ure you’ll grow into it, when you don’t even know if or how you’ll grow
3. You should know that in a few years time, your needs and stan­dards will change and you’ll have to do some­thing dif­fer­ent then anyway!
4. You con­vince your­self this is the best way to shop — because you can shop once and be done with it — shop­ping is painful

Why do we act this way when we should know better?!

I’ll tell you why we act this way, and… it’s not your mother’s fault. It’s your soft­ware vendor’s fault. They want you to buy as much as you think you’ll ever need right upfront.

With Progress Actional, we’ve made it safe for you to buy just what you need for web ser­vices and SOA man­age­ment. Here’s how…

• You can start small, with­out penalty for growth.
• You can deploy eas­ily, once, and every­thing works together.
• There is a sin­gle per­for­mance char­ac­ter­is­tic for the prod­uct; new fea­tures don’t require a dif­fi­cult “redesign” of the whole deployment.
• Pric­ing aligns with the solu­tion, not with how it’s pur­chased or how it’s deployed.

I don’t want you to hate the big ven­dors any more than Freud wants you to hate your momma. Like him, I just want to help heal the pain they cause.