Simon Willison's Weblog: enterprise

What are some early examples of SaaS?

2013-09-30T09:58:00+00:00

My answer to What are some early examples of SaaS? on Quora

37 Signals' Basecamp was one of the pioneers if modern SaaS back in 2004.

Tags: enterprise, entrepreneurship, startups, quora, saas

What are key considerations when building behind the firewall web apps?

2013-09-15T15:24:00+00:00

My answer to What are key considerations when building behind the firewall web apps? on Quora

CSRF and XSS are still important: don't leave any security vulnerabilities which might allow an evil website out on the internet to run JavaScript that steals data from your behind-the-firewall web application.

Tags: csrf, enterprise, software-engineering, webapps, quora, saas

What is the best resource for someone who is non-technical to learn about computer programming/creating software?

2013-08-08T18:44:00+00:00

My answer to What is the best resource for someone who is non-technical to learn about computer programming/creating software? on Quora

Learn to program. You don't need to learn programming to the standard where you could work professionally as a software engineer, but having enough programming knowledge to write some simple programs and automate some simple tasks will make you enormously more capable when it comes to working with programmers - or in business life in general.

Think about it like learning to write: being able to draft effective emails, blog posts and press releases is a valuable skill for any businessperson, even if you don't write professionally to the standard required to produce magazine articles and novels.

As for the best resource... Code Academy is worth a look as a starting point.

Tags: enterprise, entrepreneurship, hacking, programmers, programming, software-engineering, startups, quora

Quoting Tim Bray

2010-01-06T08:20:23+00:00

What I’m writing here is the single most important take-away from my Sun years, and it fits in a sentence: The community of developers whose work you see on the Web, who probably don’t know what ADO or UML or JPA even stand for, deploy better systems at less cost in less time at lower risk than we see in the Enterprise.

— Tim Bray

Tags: enterprise, startups, sun, tim-bray

Quoting Aral Balkan

2009-01-08T18:10:31+00:00

The simple truth is that in the age of Web 2.0/3.0, in the era of cloud and utility computing, the application server is a commodity. A commercial, proprietary app server simply cannot survive in this environment anywhere outside the lethargic, soft-padded walls of the enterprise.

— Aral Balkan

Tags: appservers, aral-balkan, coldfusion, commoditisation, enterprise, open-source

If It Looks Like a Cow, Swims Like a Dolphin and Quacks Like a Duck, It Must Be Enterprise Software

2007-10-22T13:51:37+00:00

If It Looks Like a Cow, Swims Like a Dolphin and Quacks Like a Duck, It Must Be Enterprise Software

Interesting discussion about why enterprise software tends to completely suck from an end-user point of view.

Tags: design, enterprise, enterprisesoftware, khoivinh, usability

Website for the masses!

2007-08-14T08:44:00+00:00

My answer to Website for the masses! on Ask MetaFilter

You could try building it on top of a wiki engine, like MediaWiki - see my comment on this older question.

Tags: ask-metafilter, cms, enterprise, management, content, movable, type, expression, engine, blog, noblog, corporate, plone

Quoting Paul Graham

2007-03-27T23:57:44+00:00

If you don't think you're smart enough to start a startup doing something technically difficult, just write enterprise software. Enterprise software companies aren't technology companies, they're sales companies, and sales depends mostly on effort.

— Paul Graham

Tags: enterprise, paul-graham