The enterprise software business is a serious business with serious people. It needs serious commentary. It doesn't need people accusing one another of being lying liars.

But let's do it anyway. Here are my three great lies. What are yours? (Email me!)

1. It will enable you to seize and maintain competitive advantage. What the heck does that mean? Does competitive advantage mean your product is better? Your service more pleasant? Or does it mean your profits are fatter? And exactly how does it "enable" it? Enable is a weasel word that means nothing. Of course, I usually see this term in marketing literature--I can't document that an actual salesperson has ever said this!

2. It ensures seamless interoperability. Right. Eternal youth, too. And a perpetual motion machine. World peace. And a decent cigar from outside of Cuba. I never really grokked that word "ensure" anyway. Does it bean "assure" or "insure"? Am I supposed to be en-thused by this? But maybe lie will be consigned to the dustbin of history as my third big lie starts to take hold...

3. We deliver an ecosystem. Well, I hope not. I'm more comfortable with the thought of a bunch of applications (or services) being stitched together and more-or-less getting the job done than I am of a single ecosystem that (to read the analogy literally) is full of bugs, other creepy-crawlies, big storms, too much heat sometimes and too little light other times, and an unpredictability that continues to make weather forecasting the single most difficult computing challenge on, well, the planet. No ecosystems, please. Just stuff that works!