The other week Dexplora from Sweden garnered some attention in the news services with their release of a iPhone front end to salesforce dubbed 'getsalesdone'. You can read my review here.
Spending some thought cycles around this, I realized that we maybe witnessing the birth of a new software category - the category I will name 'User Experience Software' (UES). Let's do some definitions first:
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To see this new category to strive - we will need to see a few things happen:
Another thought has to be - why hasn't there been a UES market before? Well, for the longest time it wasn't technically possible. Client Server famously was two tier, and when three tier was required for the Internet architectures, the communication between browsers / the UI and the business logic was completely proprietary and locked up. I would even today seen traditional reflexes from enterprise vendors and to see them trying to lock out the UES vendors. But with self confident customers that move will only succeed, if the vendors provide a better or at least 'good enough' user experience to their products. If not their products won't be used and be successful and that will be too much for them to risk to loose.
Ironically the iOS and less the Android app architecture favors a move to UES, too - as they allow the creation of proprietary 'thick' applications, that require an opening of the communication protocols between the application on the smartphone and the business application logic residing somewhere in the cloud.
We have seen more layers of the ISO stack being markets for themselves. The most prominent being the database software category. Likewise the application server software category. Will 2013 see the birth of the UES category?
Spending some thought cycles around this, I realized that we maybe witnessing the birth of a new software category - the category I will name 'User Experience Software' (UES). Let's do some definitions first:
- What is UES?
UES is software, that changes the user experience of an enterprise application, but is not built by the vendor of the application.
- How does it work?
The UES uses (public) APIs to the application that it provides a user experience to. It needs to leverage open authorization / identification mechanisms as well.
To see this new category to strive - we will need to see a few things happen:
- We need to see openness of the enterprise applications to expose their business functionality to a different user interface. The good news is, that technically all modern software systems are able to do that - the question is - will the vendors allow that. Salesforce for instance does, Workday does not.
- We need to see massively greater UI talent with the UES vendors than the enterprise application vendors have in house or can procure. If the enterprise vendors could provide the best user experience to their back end systems - then the category will fall flat instantly. Luckily for any UES vendors out there - this hasn't happened and I do not expect it to happen. Compensation of the talent, which today resides mainly in UI consulting firms (eg frog design) should be easy - as UES vendors should have deeper pockets thanks to the license revenue they can charge than the service providers they compete with for talent.
- There needs to be enough license revenue to create a market. But since user experience is critical for the acceptance and usage of enterprise systems - I would not be concerned about it. I think a UES vendor can easily charge 20-30% of the license price of the back end system.
Another thought has to be - why hasn't there been a UES market before? Well, for the longest time it wasn't technically possible. Client Server famously was two tier, and when three tier was required for the Internet architectures, the communication between browsers / the UI and the business logic was completely proprietary and locked up. I would even today seen traditional reflexes from enterprise vendors and to see them trying to lock out the UES vendors. But with self confident customers that move will only succeed, if the vendors provide a better or at least 'good enough' user experience to their products. If not their products won't be used and be successful and that will be too much for them to risk to loose.
Ironically the iOS and less the Android app architecture favors a move to UES, too - as they allow the creation of proprietary 'thick' applications, that require an opening of the communication protocols between the application on the smartphone and the business application logic residing somewhere in the cloud.
We have seen more layers of the ISO stack being markets for themselves. The most prominent being the database software category. Likewise the application server software category. Will 2013 see the birth of the UES category?