BUSINESS LAW

Business Law

Business Law

The paper suggests that the most severe problems in software companies are not technical but related to business and legal issues. Software companies tend to emphasize clever technical details while they forget the economical facts, the real customer needs, and the legal environment.

Software engineering research would be more helpful to software business if it took into consideration also issues like economics, intellectual property rights, and commitment management.

Technology enthusiasm overcomes business rationale too often. Most software companies seem to start with a bright technical innovation or an excellent idea of a technical solution to a problem. Typically they also have high knowledge in that technical area. In a word, they know how to write computer programs. (David 2009)

On the other hand it looks as if those start-up companies only rarely have proper understanding of the business rationale even in their own field. They quite often lack e.g. marketing and financing abilities. Furthermore, it is quite typical that the founders of a software company can not see what their software looks like as a product in the markets from the customers' point of view. Instead, they tend to see the software as a promising technical solution or a clever piece of engineering work. Most customers, however, are not willing to pay for neat algorithms, intelligent data structures, or clever protocols. They want to buy effective solutions to their problems. Of course, technical superiority does not need to be in conflict with solving customers' problems. Certainly, they often go together. Yet, to build a successful software enterprise, the most important thing is not the bright technical detail hidden in the program, but the question whether customers are willing to pay for that software product or not. (David 2009)

Technology allows both employees and consumers to be watched and profiled in ways never before imaginable. There are transgressions made by employees against the company such as using the Internet for personal transactions. There are transgressions that companies make against employees, such as invasion of privacy. There are also transgressions of companies against consumers through invasion of privacy, unauthorized data collection, price fixing, or sale of personal information. Lastly, there are simply the criminal uses of the Internet to steal, vandalize, and assault.

For e-Commerce to be successful there must be a reliable, available, scaleable, and secure platform. Web enterprises can apply data mining tools to the data and begin to create profiles with information about the users.

It is not only a question of marketing the products right. To give emphasis to the customer needs even at the expense of technical advantages may have some effects on several phases of the software process. That includes requirements management, designing, implementation, and quality assurance, but also drafting the contracts. For instance, many software producers are selling several versions of their products basically because of marketing reasons. They might have for example shareware versions, public betas, or free "light" versions to get people to use their products.

Because of these marketing methods, they need supportive software engineering techniques, ...