What does Industrial Strength mean and are the tools you use everyday industrial strength? I heard this term at PTC/USER this week to describe Sharepoint. When I heard this my first thought was about the tools I use everyday and “if” they would pass as industrial strength. Actually the first tool I though of was WordPress (I wondered if the person I was speaking to would classify WordPress as industrial strength). Certainly something that is open source could not be industrial strength or how could something that is in the cloud be industrial strength? Well I was intrigued enough to google a bit. My first surprise was that wikipedia does NOT contain the term for anything other than something about potato chips… My next search, shown below, tells me that it is software that is fault tolerant. Well this really confused me relative to Microsoft. Certainly the Microsoft tools I use everyday are not industrial strength (well certainly not the 64 bit Vista I am running).
- Google Search:
Industrial Strength http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/industrial+strength
Refers to hardware or software that is designed for fault tolerant operation. It mostly refers to software that has built-in safeguards against system failures. For example, an industrial-strength operating system runs its applications in protected address spaces and does not lock up the computer if an application fails. Industrial-strength features in a DBMS are referential integrity and two-phase commit. Programs become industrial strength after being thoroughly tested in live user environments for extensive periods. See bulletproof.
Industrial Strength http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/industrial-strength.htm
Extremely strong or concentrated or durable
…………………..Just restarted the post because my Internet Explorer just crashed… So what happened to the WordPress post I was writing? It was still in the cloud and available. Onward…….
So what about cloud applications or SAAS applications? If something is delivered to me as an internet application it certainly cannot be reliable or secure. Well this we know as false. At Vuuch like many places we use www.saleforce.comwhich as we all know is in the cloud. I have never had a quality problem with the solution and I am sure larger places than Vuuch have determined security is non issue.
- Conclusion
Microsoft it is NOT a measure/guarantee of industrial strength!
Cloud or SAAS solutions can be industrial strength!
Open Source can be as industrial strength as something you pay for!
So I guess what this person was trying to tell me about Sharepoint would need more validation then just being from Microsoft.
