Why can't Enterprise SW Be Reliable and Sexy?

There's a raging debate going on over at ZDNet.  You can pick up a corner of it at Phil Wainewright's site, where you can read Phil'a comments (good ones) and check into the original argument from Scoble and the Enterprise Irregulars. 

It started out with BIll Gates wondering why enterprise software doesn't get mentioned much iin the blogosphere.  (I'd note that he doesn't read the right blogs, but I know what he means -- the sexy, big readership tech blogs are all about Facebook, Twitter, and the latest Web 2.0 software.)  Scoble replied that's because the user interfaces on Enterprise sw are awful.  The enterprise guys said enterprise software is about reliability and scalability and not about nice user interfaces.

Everyone is, of course, missing the point.  First of all everyone uses both kinds of software.  Business users have a life outside the office where they shop and socialize and consumers have to bank and rely on the back-ends of big systems, written with big, complex enterprise software.

Now that we've been forwever spoiled by the introduction of good user interfaces on consumer software we want that same ease of use for business applications (enterprise or elsewhere).  A few enterprise application vendors are trying, but it's pretty early in the game.  Software vendors keep telling me they want to show me an application that the users can customize themselves, but they must have different users in mind than the ones I know.  And even the user interfaces (without fooling around with customization) can be pretty grim.

The recipe is clear.  A user interface is user friendly when the user can step right up to it and do what he wants or needs to do without getting someone to help him.  Of course enterprise applications will always have tons of geekware in the basement which users will never understand -- and don't need to -- but we need to be able to get the interface intuitively.  After all, I don't need to understand how to fix an internal combustion engine to drive a car.

And don't think the CIOs who buy enterprise software don't care.  Of course they put reliablility and other enterprise priorities first, but they pay for the help desk that supports users who have to cope with less than friendly interfaces, so whoever builds great enterprise applications with great user interfaces should get lots of customer attention.