A friend of mine recently opted to buy the Samsung Galaxy instead of the Apple iPhone - for various reasons.
Samsung Galaxy is not the same as the Apple iPhone, however, it is really quite good by itself. It runs on the Google Android platform. Samsung among many others is part of the Open Handset Alliance.
The alliance has mobile operators; handset manufacturers; software companies; semiconductor companies...
It made me wonder that over the years, the consumer space has become to open and collaborative; companies are partnering with each other in ways that make sense to come up with meaningful products and services to consumers in a very desirable manner.
In my eyes such alliances reflect the realization that one company cannot do everything on it's own.
On the other hand, in the enterprise world, I still see companies trying to build a lot of things internally - not opening up to team up with expert players and collaboratively working on shipping meaningful products and services to customers in a desirable way.
There is so much innovation happening in the consumer space, so fast, the enterprise world is merely catching up. I feel, the least we can do is partner with some of the players in the consumer space. I have heard the usual arguments of security, complexity bla bla often as reasons why the enterprise world does not work on this model. I am sure these are aspects that are very important in any kind of application.
I don't believe the enterprise is unique.
Just because a user is using an enterprise software, does he/she have to endure bad design?
