Are Your Target Market's Internal AI Projects Like The EU Teams Alt?

Spoiler Alert; Yep.

I've blogged on this a fair few times lately. Most recently a month back. Partly as this is the fifth cycle of the same self-denial delulu land inhabiting iterations I've personally witnessed.

I just caught the tail end of one from the late 80s. Where the tension was between mainframes (manly IBM but I was on the Unix side) and in-house coders.

The next one really formed me though. A decade on, the ERP revolution. Specifically 'package' solutions which needed a ton of modules and add-ons and report writers to be of any use. Soon everyone preferred to write their own than suffer more vendor sleaze.

Another ten years pass and everyone must go 'web'. But again, frustration with and scepticism of Big Tech meant a website customers could interact with, were done in-house.

Another decade flew past, and the Cloud became the thing. Gratefully embraced in part due to the nightmares of the previous cycle's maintenance. And what we now termed SaaS came to the 'rescue'.

You could argue intensely whether any of these phases actually delivered. There's the Build or Buy pendulum. Maybe sometimes it's better to do-it-yourself, other times, best to ask the pros.

Which brings us to the now. AI. Yes, Enterprise-grade efforts seem more in 'build' mode. Despite the gazillions being swept up by Big Consultancies.

I asked an AI to map this;

It suggested the pendulum keeps swinging, albeit the jury's out right now.

This has clear ramifications for anyone selling the intangibles of 'code'.

Strangely, or perhaps by design, whether you help to build or buy, you can shape your pitch to suit. Maybe only at this precise moment in time. For who knows where we'll be even in a couple o' Quarters?

The problem with the European Union bureaucratic tech efforts, or any committee-driven corporate initiative, can be summed up with the withering putdown of our age, 'I can't think of any question for which the answer is a public sector produced alt to Microsoft Teams'. No matter how unserious you must be about video calls to use such junkware.

Execs are terrified of accidentally buying or building their enterprise equivalent of that. Whether half-baked internal project or from the loudest flashiest start-up, just to appease an innovation KPI.

No-one wants to repeat previous generations' mistakes with what'd be today slopware. Position yourself on the side of the line that actually solves the problem, rather than piling on the pressure.

In our terms, we need to move them on from any balancing act, 'if the answer is buying this in/doing this yourself[*delete as applicable], what's the question?'