[Info-vax] Using VMS for a web server

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-06-06 16:02:11 +0000, David Froble said:

> So, what are we saying?  That there can be such a thing as "too good"?

Yes, there is such a thing.  Over-designing some product is 
comparatively easy.  If you miss your target market, you're in deep 
trouble.

If you're building a barn, then you'll find using trees are expensive 
and heavy, you need a number of large trees, and constructing a classic 
post-and-beam requires effort, skill and (lately) a ginormous CNC mill. 
 Using an engineered solution such as truss involves more complex 
pieces, and trusses are prone to sudden failures in extreme conditions, 
but trusses are cheaper, and you can use more of what might have been a 
brace or just scrap wood within a post-and-beam structure.  There are 
yet more expensive and better solutions than using a post-and-beam 
design, too.  There's a market for post-and-beam barns, but it's not 
nearly as big as that of the pole barn, or of the ordinary commercial 
prefab construction that you can see getting delivered to building 
sites by the truckload.  But I digress.

Getting back to software, a well-run, existing production application 
installation usually tries to get to at least a local minima of 
whatever they're optimizing for (usually cost and effort, increasingly 
based on data collection and analysis), and a major upgrade or a 
replacement installation often looks at getting into whatever the 
current global minima might be.

Yes, there are vendors which target better-grade products — not usually 
"too good" — and there can be profits here for the best of those 
vendors.   But it's a whole lot of work and a whole lot of investment 
to ensure that you're meeting and variously exceeding the expectations 
of your customers.  Spend too much getting to "perfect", and you'll 
likely lose your customers, too.  Tradeoffs.


-- 
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC