Idea — LTT should review more enterprise software

[CharlieTheJedi]

In the enterprise software world, the “review” ecosystem and journalism around what to buy is highly overdue to be disrupted (beyond media creation / editing software, which I know is already a strong suit of LTT). Here are a few reasons to illustrate why this is an area LTT could disrupt:

 

• Trusted content creators like Gartner and their “magic quadrant” control the narrative and operate closer to a traditional media environment and closed off CIO network
• Expensive licenses make enterprise software difficult to obtain for the average Joe to review until they’re working at a company and forced to use it
• Sending effective feedback to these companies is highly difficult; they like to fly under the radar avoid negative PR and increase stranglehold on their customers (looking at you Oracle)
• Pricing can be opaque because of companies that literally don’t list their price and non-public enterprise license agreement deals, ie companies don’t share what they paid to others
• Need for technical know-how to properly test this kind of software
• LTT viewership is aging and moving into IT positions that support this kind of software; as a trusted brand LTT could move into this space along with the viewership
• Seeing poorly built enterprise software that viewers normally wouldn’t see every day would be fun to watch; bonus points if  “WTF why would I pay for this??”
• Comparing open source alternatives with their expensive enterprise cousins

 

The challenge would be, making this topic cool enough to make a good return out of it in views. I think it could be done given the reach of LTT’s draw, and making the videos interesting, could bring in experts from the outside, could point the software to funny use cases

 

Examples of enterprise software to review (broad in scope):

 

SAP

Tableau

Salesforce

AWS 

Oracle (Java, DB, Cloud, etc)

SAS

Azure

Power BI

MS Dynamics
Office 365

OneDrive

Various unheard of IBM products

OpenShift

Watson

Cognos

Google Cloud Platform

G-suite

Workday

UltiPro

Cornerstone LMS

ServiceNow

NetSuite

Pivotal

Broadcom / CA stuff

GIS (Esri, ArcGIS)

…and more

 

 

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

This isnt what ltt does though...

Ltt is a consumer focused channel, that caters to people who like games and like looking at a lot of $$$ is hardware

[SignatureSigner]

Adding to what HelpfulTechWiard said

Its not what the general people watching LTT are looking for.

Maybe someday they could have a channel dedicated to more business or enterprize stuff but that stuff is expensive and not exactly economical to make videos on.

The general population doesn't care 

 

[manikyath]

the problem with reviewing enterprise hardware, is that all of it is highly specialized stuff, so you dont even really have any baseline to compare it to.

 

also, most companies will set up a POC (proof of concept) with multiple applications to make their choice, or rely on suppliers who have done so.

 

even much closer to LTT's home base: they cant really 'review' office suites, because all of them are basicly just a different market. if you need m365, you need m365, if you need good opensource support, you need libreoffice, if you live in 1997 you need openoffice, if you're a cheapskate you need Gsuite...

[startrek03]

3 minutes ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

This isnt what ltt does though...

Ltt is a consumer focused channel, that caters to people who like games and like looking at a lot of $$$ is hardware

While that is definitely true, we also know that LMG is willing to expand into different areas. LTT labs is one example. Admittedly, it is probably difficult to get an audience for those topics because, well, if you are not using the software, you probably won't care. Though, it might be possible on a separate channel, that isn't super focused on growth.

[CharlieTheJedi]

8 minutes ago, startrek03 said:

While that is definitely true, we also know that LMG is willing to expand into different areas. LTT labs is one example. Admittedly, it is probably difficult to get an audience for those topics because, well, if you are not using the software, you probably won't care. Though, it might be possible on a separate channel, that isn't super focused on growth.

I would pay a subscription fee for access if I had to, I’m dying for this content. All of these companies make at least some version of terrible software and get away with it without any negative PR whatsoever

[Helpful Tech Witch]

21 minutes ago, startrek03 said:

While that is definitely true, we also know that LMG is willing to expand into different areas. LTT labs is one example. Admittedly, it is probably difficult to get an audience for those topics because, well, if you are not using the software, you probably won't care. Though, it might be possible on a separate channel, that isn't super focused on growth.

Ltt labs isn’t a channel though. They’ve said it’s much more white paper research oriented stuff 

[startrek03]

12 minutes ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

Ltt labs isn’t a channel though. They’ve said it’s much more white paper research oriented stuff 

I'd imagine that some of the labs content will bleed through on the main channel.

[Needfuldoer]

I think the closest we might see is "homelab" type content, like you get from ServeTheHome, Level 1 Techs, and Craft Computing.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Just now, startrek03 said:

I'd imagine that some of the labs content will bleed through on the main channel.

at most theyll probably be using labs data for reviews

[trag1c]

I would go out on a limb and say 99% of LTT viewers wouldn't be interested. People who watch LTT are into computers but are not typically IT or SWE. Talking about say sharding a database for horizontal scaling is a pretty dry topic for even those interested.

 

I would also say that a lot of these software packages are too complex to fit into a 15-20 minute video. You're looking at hours of video just to do a proper review.

[GuiltySpark_]

5 minutes ago, trag1c said:

I would go out on a limb and say 99% of LTT viewers wouldn't be interested.

You are likely correct and the LTT has the metrics to back that up.. That's why we will never see stuff like this covered, its simply not the correct audience. 

[LogicalDrm]

For video suggestions, please post to official thread:

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1046558-thread-for-linus-tech-tips-video-suggestions/

 

Not gonna merge this, commenting is contributing in here.

***

 

Adding my own. There's big problem with reviewing software. And that is that you need to be familiar with what that particular software does. To review it in scale what you are after, we would be looking at someone who has years of experience of type of software you are looking at. Like with video editing software. Lets say Alex does review. Well, he knows 3D modeling software and CAD software. But he doesn't know video editing software. Would you watch video where someone who doesn't have a clue what and how software works reviews it? No, I doubt you would. Thats why Alex reviews laptops and does some workshop content. Thats why Anthony is their Linux guy and why they have channel for Macs. Because those areas need people who know what they are doing to do believable and somewhat good quality content.

 

This is good example of how not to do it. Back when this video was released, I had been studying for a year for my current degree, and seen that this would be normal industry level gear. So seeing Linus be acting like it was the most wonderful tech in whole world made me cringe. I wouldn't want to see anyone there comparing GIS software, something I will do as part of my current job fairly soon. While I only have experience from 3 software on that space, its still using 3 more in educational and professional setting that probably anyone at LMG. Would I like to see them reviewing Trimble software for me? Not really.

 

Lets add what it takes, both in time and process. In order to get good grip whether software works or not, you would need to have robust and reliable process you can do over and over again. Then learn where shortcuts etc. are hidden in that particular software to make sure that you are actually testing software's limits, not yours as user (I'm getting used to LibreOffice on my home PC vs using Office at work and at school for years, still googling where to find some basic features). This would mean maybe 2 weeks per software maybe.

 

And sure, learning new software could be part of the review on itself. Then again, on professional setting new hires get tutored with software that is new to them, and with new processes. Same goes if company changes software, they get professional to train everyone to use new software. So that would only interest those who are looking for alternatives, or do freelance work. So how big part of the audience would watch it?

 

Personally, I would. But I would not get much out of it. Proving this, I have Level1s home server video running on second screen and no idea whats going on in that video.

[danomicar]

4 hours ago, CharlieTheJedi said:

Various unheard of IBM products

This one made me laugh! 

 

I don't understand how IBM manages to stay in business. Who is paying for their services other than the Weather Channel??

[CharlieTheJedi]

1 hour ago, danomicar said:

This one made me laugh! 

 

I don't understand how IBM manages to stay in business. Who is paying for their services other than the Weather Channel??

Massive companies with millions sunk in large ELA agreements running on premise, also state governments

[Roswell]

Those in charge of purchasing and implementing enterprise solutions have absolutely no shits to give about a random YouTube channel's review of it.

 

Not to mention LMG has no business reviewing things they have no experience with...

[JustinDonnaruma]

This is something I have been considering doing for a while, but wasn't sure how much interest there would actually be. I'm an Architect in the enterprise software space, currently working on Netsuite and Salesforce for an RSA spinoff, and previously I was a Technical Architect for Salesforce as a consulting partner.

The difficulties as I see them are that you would have to create a compelling set of business requirements that you could consistently test against, and for "Enterprise Software" as a whole, this would likely mean creating business requirements for various industry verticals in order to create as close to an "apples to apples" comparison as possible.

You would want to start with the following verticals:

• SaaS Software
• Agency (Consultancy, Broker, etc)
• Retail (B2B, B2C, B2B2C)
• Manufacturing (D2C and Traditional)

The above vertical are where most small/medium businesses exist, and would likely be the biggest audience. You would also want to simultaneously release a video, and detailed review data.

After you do the business requirements reviews, you would also want to do quality of life reviews, based on customizability, learning curve, community availability, and quality and availability of consultants and implementation partners.

Comparing Open Source versions would be awesome as well, but add in additional requirements to go over, such as installation difficulty, and infrastructure administration difficulty/costs.

[ra_men]

On 5/7/2022 at 6:16 AM, JustinDonnaruma said:

This is something I have been considering doing for a while, but wasn't sure how much interest there would actually be. I'm an Architect in the enterprise software space, currently working on Netsuite and Salesforce for an RSA spinoff, and previously I was a Technical Architect for Salesforce as a consulting partner.

The difficulties as I see them are that you would have to create a compelling set of business requirements that you could consistently test against, and for "Enterprise Software" as a whole, this would likely mean creating business requirements for various industry verticals in order to create as close to an "apples to apples" comparison as possible.

You would want to start with the following verticals:

• SaaS Software
• Agency (Consultancy, Broker, etc)
• Retail (B2B, B2C, B2B2C)
• Manufacturing (D2C and Traditional)

The above vertical are where most small/medium businesses exist, and would likely be the biggest audience. You would also want to simultaneously release a video, and detailed review data.

After you do the business requirements reviews, you would also want to do quality of life reviews, based on customizability, learning curve, community availability, and quality and availability of consultants and implementation partners.

Comparing Open Source versions would be awesome as well, but add in additional requirements to go over, such as installation difficulty, and infrastructure administration difficulty/costs.

I run a Salesforce consultancy and agree, evaluating and reviewing enterprise software would be a very hard problem. Enterprise SaaS (specifically the mature ones) can be so complex and feature-rich that it really comes down to the talent at your organization and their ability to configure things. I would be interested in hearing how LTT uses enterprise software and how they decide between homegrown vs. out-of-the-box solutions - every client has a different story and I'd be interested in hearing theirs.