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Techno Babble Exposed

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If"it takes a village to raise a child", then it probably takes an entire metropolis to get your software up and running at your company. The truth is, you could hire as many people as you want and still never be able to get the job done. Consultants first bring to the party a few village elders who convince you of your hopeless lack of competence. Then they send in the children - fresh out of grad school - who really don't understand your business. The way they keep you distracted from their incompetence is to describe what they're doing with words that you've never heard before. Here are a few.

ASP n. 1. application service provider; 2. a company that installs and runs new software for you at its location rather than yours; 3. what you feel like when your service provider goes out of business, taking your software and your data with it.

Con·fig·ure v. 1. to select the specific functions contained in the software that you want to use; 2. to completely rewrite those functions so that they don't destroy your company.

De·ploy·ment n. 1. putting new software onto the PCs of the people who will use it; 2. a"scaled deployment" where consultants install the new software only on the computers of people they really dislike.

Im·ple·men·ta·tion n. 1. a word that in reality does not appear in any dictionary, making it impossible for users to understand it without going to consultants for an explanation; 2. the work leading up to a new icon appearing on your PC's screen.

In·te·gra·tion n. 1. getting your new software to"talk", or exchange information, with other computer systems you already have; 2."back-end" integration connects the new software to software used by the anal-retentive types in finance; 3."front-end" integration is a highly passive-aggressive attempt to use software to prevent customer service representatives and salespeople from doing their jobs.

Op·er·a·tion·al·ise v. 1. to complete an implementation; 2. more specifically, when an implementation is completed by consultants who got rejected from medical school and decided to attend business school instead.

Ser·vice-lev·el agree·ment n. 1. a contract that stipulates the degree to which consultants will be held responsible for problems they have when running your software for you.

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