Red Hat CEO Says Software Vendor Model Is Broken

alphadogg writes "The current model of selling commercial enterprise software is broken, charged the CEO for Red Hat. It is too expensive, doesn't address user needs and, worst of all, it leaves chief information officers holding all the risk of implementing new systems. 'The business models between customer and vendors are fundamentally broken,' said Jim Whitehurst, speaking Wednesday at the Interop conference in New York. 'Vendors have to guess at what [customers] want, and there is a mismatch of what customers want and what they get. Creating feature wars is not what the customer is looking for.' Whitehurst estimated that the total global IT market, not including telecommunications, is about $1.4 trillion a year. Factor in the rough estimates that half of all IT projects fail or are significantly downgraded, and that only half of all features in software packages are actually used, then it would follow that 'easily $500 billion of that $1.4 trillion is fundamentally wasted every year,' he said."

Blah, blah, blah...

[Anonymous Coward]

...buy some Red Hat products.

Re:Actively used features

[snowraver1]

Easy, just make a menu item for them and then every time it's clicked, send usage data. That way you can have the worst of both worlds: A convoluted menu system and lack of functionality.

Re:WHAT vendors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope their sales engineers were wearing name badges. It would have been unnerving for them to have you stand next to them yelling "YOU ARE NOTHING!" in their ears.

Re:WHAT vendors?

[Michael Kristopeit]

why should i believe you? i walked past the dealership today and asked the salesman what time it was, even though i had a clock on the phone in my pocket... i was testing him. he gave me the correct time.

why do you chose to not claim responsibility for your comments with your given name? why do you cower? what are you afraid of?

you're an idiot.