Architecting Cloud Applications for the Enterprise - Part II - VeryBigCorp buys IssueTracker

Now that we have introduced our characters, we will start this story describing the acquisition process of IssueTracker in VeryBigCorp.

IssueTracker was first used in VBC by a very limited number of people. Someone in some business unit somehow learnt about it and thought it would be a good tool to automate their work.

A senior manager in that business unit approved the expense, a subscription was bought and IssueTracker became a new software asset in VBC. IT was not involved in this process and the acquisition happened in the "black market" of IT.

And thus, IssueTracker became an "illegal immigrant" in VBC IT department: not everybody knows it is there, some people think it is great, other would like to get rid of it, most regulators (in IT) would simply ignore it, as long as it doesn't cause any trouble. 

This limbo status could last for a long time. Ironically, IssueTracker is so useful that it gains notoriety. It becomes clear to the business unit managers that it this little service is actually the perfect solution for their needs. Moreover, users love it. It's simple to use, it's intuitive and it does its job efficiently. Users productivity soars. IssueTracker is the little service that could.

All this goodness eventually reaches the business unit senior manager and he decides it is something that must be used by everybody. Just imagine all the productivity gains for the entire division! Increasing the efficiency of 10,000 employees under his leadership will have a tremendous impact in his bottom line.

So the senior manager calls the CIO and IssueTracker existence is made transparent. Not only the CIO learns about this "illegal immigrant", he now has to legalize it :-).

The CIO calls SuperCloudySoftware sales department and requests a meeting with their technical folks to "sort out a few issues" of turning IssueTracker into a qualified citizen of VBC IT.

On the other side of the line, SuperCloudySoftware just can't believe what has just happened. VeryBigCorp wants to buy 10,000 seats of Issuetracker.  10,000 seats!

The best technical guys in SuperCloudySoftware are sent to the meeting then. Their mission: do whatever it takes to win this Customer! Failure is not an option.

Next chapter of this story is the meeting between the CIO and SuperCloudySoftware.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 05, 2009
  I wanted to provide pointers and credit to the detail behind the ‘Architectural Impact’ portion of the