An iGeneration view of TLAs
Over on Enterprise Alley, I've been joined by Zack Whittaker. Zack's a computer science student so is ideal for providing a fresh pair of eyes on the world of enterprise application startups. I was interested to get his take on three letter acronyms - TLAs - something upon which the industry survives. With Zack's permission, here's his take as rendered to me in email:
SAP: a company which creates enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. ERP, which I've done in my studies, is essentially a business resource, allowing people to shift people, money, organisational structures, projects, customer relationship management etc. around. Even though I know this, I still don't see the use for it, but ultimately businesses would be royally screwed without it.
CRM: got it; call management, customer management, keeping the customers sweet and happy through technology of some description. Yawn.
SCM: making sure the flow of raw materials or products get processed and shipped down a conveyor belt into something wondrous at the end, which eventually sells to make money.
GISMO: that New York geographic company which presumably provides Google and the big wigs with maps and data, and suchlike. (Google, IBM, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle = GISMO)
Gartner analysts must be rolling their eyes heavenwards but heck - it's a new generation of potential buyers out there.