End of Application???

One of the advantage of co-blogging on the same site is that you can get two view on the same topic at the same blog :). I did review both Todd's Blog on End of Applications as well as Surekha's response on the same topic. In principle I agree that it would be great to get rid of the word or term "Application" - however in my mind this would not be practical because this word is very widely used in the Business Community.

Following is something that has worked for me in the past. Business would refer to Siebel or PeopleSoft application whenever they meant CRM or Order Management. With the help from the LOB-IT (and the decision makers from Business Operations) we were able to get business to start referring to them as Forecasting Application, Order Management application and Lead Scoring Application. It took over a year to change to get business to refer to the business process as applications - instead of getting rid of the term applications.

As a true EA - in all my presentation, budgeting cycle and various leadership team meeting with business - I referred to them as "Business Solution" with no success. Business still called them "Applications". Finally, it dawned on me - it is equivalent to the common vocabulary such as we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway- we most probably will not be able to change this to "we drive on a driveway and park on a parkway" . Similarly I do not believe we can get rid of the term "Applications" (and believe me I did try my best to get rid of it :) ).

Just my thoughts on this topic.

- Yogish