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Breaking the Code

For a long time the technology business was a closed society. Behind the scenes, IT administrators kept rooms full of servers and switches running. Everyone else did their jobs, oblivious to IT until something broke. From that era, IT professionals became accustomed to speaking in a code of acronyms and shorthand known only to those inside the fold. The language was not specifically designed to keep outsiders away. Rather, it was a language developed out of both expediency and familiarity.

In the recent past—as little as the last six to eight years, technology has become significantly more intertwined with everyday life, so more and more people rely on and interact with systems at a deeper level. People have realized how much of their daily lives depend on technology and as a result are more interested in controlling their own tech destiny. At the same time, systems have moved out of the basement server room and into space leased in the cloud. High-level non-IT administrators are managing their leased assets as they would a leased copier, with support from a vendor, not an employee. Both of these phenomenon, end-users wanting more information and non-technical managers controlling IT assets, have led to an influx of people diving into the IT world who don’t know the IT language. These new comers to the IT world are not interested in learning the arcane language from the hot, noisy server room, and people who want these new customers should start using their language.

To market to these new customers, IT professionals need to translate their comfortable jargon into plain speech. All over the Internet you will find business claiming to be “Your IoT Specialist,” or offering “M2M Solutions World-Wide.” Their potential customers do not see their needs addressed in those words. The small chain grocery store executive doesn’t know she needs an M2M solution, she just knows that the self-serve checkouts in 14 stores need connection to the main office. The owner of a stamping plant does not know what IoT is, and he doesn’t care. He is looking for a way to get the sensors in his robot extruders to report to engineering.

In 1946, lamenting the state of the language, George Orwell set out six rules for better writing. While any writer could learn from his essay, the fifth rule is timely for anyone selling technology or technical services: “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.” Too often in IT marketing language there are plenty of words, but no real message. Consider this from the home page of a major international service firm, “Get access to leading edge innovation and best practice by using our solution accelerators and global pool of partnerships.” Try explaining that to your date over dinner. In this case, it is not just jargon, but phrases created to sound good, that mean nothing at all. Solutions are good. And acceleration shows forward movement. But what exactly is a “solution accelerator.”

It turns out Solution Accelerator is a term coined by Microsoft (not the source of the quote above). They define it as, “a collection of tested guidance and automated tools to help plan, securely deploy, and manage new Microsoft technologies—easier, faster, and at less cost.” They have put together market-tested words that communicate nothing specific but try vaguely to convey the notion that Microsoft will make your project faster and cheaper with fewer problems. When the phrase first appeared on the scene about 2006 it was industry speak for reusable code modules, a new complicated term for a simple, old concept.

It is time to get vague and meaningless phrases like Elastic Edge, Empower your Growth, and Drive Transformation out of our language. It’s time to speak with our potential clients in their terms and not ours. We may refer to it as a “proc” (hard C) but to normal people it is a processor (soft C) or a CPU. We can’t sell IoT solutions when what we are really offering is a way to connect robots in a factory with the supply chain in a warehouse. The world of people using, buying, and installing technology is broad, and will continue to grow. Many of those people are fully capable of understanding the tech we all work with, but they don’t share our language. It is time to address them in the common language we share, plain English.

Frontier Computer Corp. can help both old school IT professionals and newcomers to the field. Contact FrontierUS for straight talk on servers, routers, communications, and connections. We can create an IoT solution or get your tools talking to each other.

Contact FrontierUS at 866.226.6344.

Frontier Computer Corp. is a leader in providing IT solutions worldwide.