What’s the biggest time waster for enterprise employees? Poorly designed software.
That’s the result of a survey of 1000 enterprise employees by Enterprise Applications Company IFS.
Software usability is a big issue. The survey found that 94 percent of business IT users in the UK complained of wasting time using their business applications. Things are slow. They’re complicated and hard to use. Only 20 percent felt that their business software was easy to use.
Users felt most comfortable with web based apps — 40 percent found them easy to use.
23 percent of users found PC-based email apps like Outlook easy to use.
While only 17 percent found business applications easy to use.
The top three time wasters for enterprise software were also identified.
20 percent siad just learning to use the software took a lot of time.
19 percent thought that searching and trying to find information in business apps.
14 percent had problems trying to navigate through business processes in software.
Users also complained about problems with transferring data between systems and being able to navigate between business applications.
The results reconfirm that users have become used to the ease of use of browser-based consumer applications and are now demanding similar usability from business applications.
What do all these results mean for software vendors? Improving software usability is something that needs a lot more focus.
Six years ago Sarbanes-Oxley mandated corporate accounting behavior. Since then companies have widened their scope for how to meet regulatory requirements from SOX and other laws, and to also more broadly address concerns around corporate risk management.
A new class of software is evolving called GRC (Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance) and it is gaining popularity. AMR Research estimates that in the US, Japan and Germany, companies will spend $32.1 billion this year on GRC software and services. That spending is up 7.4 percent over 2007.
The report which surveyed 420 businesses found that 65 percent are planning to increase their GRC spending and that 26 percent expect no change in their spending.
How can GRC help businesses? The AMR report found the following reasons why companies buy GRC software:
31% - To help manage and mitigate business risk
18% - To reduce the cost of GRC
17% - To automate GRC activities
12% - Transparency
11% - To avoid the risk and cost of noncompliance
10% - To create a legally defendable information environment
Not Adobe’s Flash, but Flash solid state storage devices. EMC’s CEO Joe Tucci says that flash solid state drives (SSDs) are ready to revolutionize the storage business. Current single-level cell SSDs are on the market now, but expensive. In the wings is a new type of SSD called the multi-level cell, and production costs for the new technology is expected to be considerably cheaper.
With the introduction of multi-level SSDs, Tucci predicts that the technology will become the storage media of choice. He describes it as being phenomenally faster and more reliable than current options. He said that flash SSDs are “the one thing that will change the storage industry more than anything else over the next 10 years.”
SSDs will usher in a new wave of technology based on solid state. Tucci thinks even if Flash SSD itself is short-lived, other newer solid state technologies will follow. Prices are still going to be expensive in the short term, but EMC is predicting that by 2010 SSDs will be competitive with rotating disk technologies.
While EMC is not the manufacturer of the solid-state chip, it plans to aggressively start deploying the chip in their devices, and with the volume of machines that EMC can sell, it is expected that prices for the chip will drift lower.
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