These people sure look happy with something they’re doing online, don’t they? Maybe they’re using an easy-to-use, configure and run suite of mission-critical Web applications? They can’t be because none really exist!

I go back-n-forth being excited by the profound ease-of-use and focused Web 2.0 applications and the nearly 140,000 open source projects out there…and being pissed off that all this stuff is STILL too hard for the average human to install, configure or assemble into a whole solution.

Don’t believe me that this is still too hard? Before I explain further, let’s pretend that you’re NOT one of the hundreds of people I’ve interacted with over the years at organizations, small to midsize businesses and even individuals who’ve never installed server-centric applications, don’t know what PHP/Ajax or dotnet is, have never heard of Web 2.0/web services/service oriented architectures, and couldn’t tell you if the internet is a circuit or packet switching network. NOR DO THEY CARE.

These people know that their publications are downtrending. That their user base is scrambling for more content delivery via the Web. Or that some kind of Web asset needs to be delivered so that they can serve the needs of their constituents, customers or prospects.

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