Over the years I’m sure you’ve seen many different OSS demonstrations. You’ve probably also seen presentations by vendors / integrators that have shown multiple different products from their suite.
How integrated have they appeared to you?
- Have they seemed tightly integrated, as if carved from a single piece of stone?
- Or have they seemed loosely integrated, a series of obviously different stones joined together with some mortar?
- Or perhaps even barely associated, a series of completely different objects (possibly through product acquisition) branded under a common marketing name?
There are different pros and cons with each approach. Tight integration possibly suits a greenfields OSS. Looser integration perhaps better suits carve-off for best-of-breed customer architecture models.
I don’t know about you, but I always prefer to be given the impression that an attempt has been made to ensure consistency in the bundling. Consistency of user-interface, workflow, data modelling/presentation, reports, etc. With modern presentation layers, database technologies and the availability of UX / CX expertise, this should be less of a hurdle than it has been in the past.