EppsNet

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

— Mark Twain

From a consulting company’s web site, explaining its strategic partnerships with IBM, Vignette and others:

Single entities are rarely the solutions for every business challenge. By partnering innovators of varied expertise, we are able to to combine all of the components necessary to solve the technology puzzle for any given client . . . Ongoing alliances allow companies to share the visionary arena for creative solutions . . .

This inscrutable gibberish should be a tipoff that some larger-than-usual deception is taking place, which indeed it is.

The real reason that smaller companies like this one partner with larger companies like IBM or Vignette is that in exchange for purchasing a certain number of software licenses, the larger company agrees to throw a few sales leads in their direction.

Of course, in pursuing those leads, the solutions they propose are not going to be driven by a detailed understanding of the clients’ business issues. They’re going to be driven by the need to resell the software licenses that they’ve already paid for:

“We recommend a solution based on the IBM Websphere product [or Vignette or whatever].”

“How can you recommend a solution before you understand what my problem is?”

“That’s the best thing about it. Websphere is the solution to any and all problems that you may have. Now let us give that nail a couple of whacks for you.”

“That’s not a nail.”

“It certainly looks like a nail to me.”

Thus spoke The Programmer.