What is True (Cloud ERP)?
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Last month Sam Harris (philosopher, Jordan Peterson on his “Wake Up” podcast. Instead of touching on numerous enlightened topics that many expected to hear from two extraordinarily intelligent modern day philosophers with opposing views on whether God exists, they spent over two hours debating on the definition(s) of “What is True”. No doubt there will be another opportunity for the two to speak again (personally, I wish Joe Rogan would invite them both on his podcast so he can mediate); Regardless, their opposing definitions (or maybe its just that Harris refused to accept two different definitions, as Peterson suggested) had me thinking of how these definitions fit in the real world.
Are there, for instance, additional definitions of truth beyond Peterson’s? Do politicians like Trump and his press secretary, Spicer, have their own definition of truth that goes beyond whether a truth is Darwinian (that which is how to act) or Newtonian (that which is empirical fact), i.e. alternative facts?
And what about True Cloud Solutions? For instance, if an IT solution which is single tenant, single database and requires the same effort to update its software as it does if the solution is deployed as a traditional on-premise instance, can it be labelled as a cloud solution simply because its hosted and the pricing model is subscription-based?
And when it comes to cloud erp, to what extent is there true cloud benefits if there is no way to receive instant and continuous sw updates. Is it True Cloud if you need to refuse or delay updates because of the significant effort (to ensure customizations continue to work in the newer update) and, more importantly, the criticality of the sw for the business to run without disruption?
It is possible to implement a SaaS ERP solution that technically meets the definitions of a True Cloud Solution. But I worry about which definition of True some software vendors are using. Does it technically meet most of the required attributes of a Software-as-a-Service solution but is inefficient, less effective and more costly then integrating several disparate but best-of-breed solutions on a single Cloud Platform? If so, I might want to look for a solution that fits with Peterson’s definition of what is True.
Here is a small excerpt of his discussion with Harris: “Something can be true at one level of analysis and not true at another. That happens all of the time. That’s what a white lie is.” and “…the fundamental axiom that I’m playing with is something that was basically expressed by Nietzsche. And it’s a definition of truth. And so, I would say, if it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true.”
As is too often the case with large ERP implementations, Harris’s meaning of true might fit initially, but it may take a few years after the dust settles before we can determine whether or not Peterson’s definition will ring true.
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