enterprise software
"However, enterprise software is like steel plumbing - expensive to lay, difficult to manipulate or move and often more expensive to replace."
"Enterprise software is several orders of magnitude more complex than departmental software. It has to manage the needs of may diverse users and functions in a way that everyone gets what they need. It has to coordinate the interaction of lots of objectives and transactions and data sources and worry about things like timing and sequence and flow."
"Customers never leave: Enterprise software is like the Hotel California - You can never leave. Once a large company has gotten stuck into a complex accounting system like SAP or Oracle the sheer institutional inertia and hassle to involved in ripping it out, junking the historical investment, and retraining everyone makes it virtually impossible to switch suppliers."
"Complex enterprise software is like a car with 4 steering wheels - it can go anywhere, in circles, at a diagonal, sideways, and more... Wow, let me delight in the beauty of your design but it's still a bitch to drive and what is it really?"
METAMIA is a free database of analogy and metaphor. Anyone can contribute or search. The subject matter can be anything. Science is popular, but poetry is encouraged. The goal is to integrate our fluid muses with the stark literalism of a relational database. Metamia is like a girdle for your muses, a cognitive girdle.