I’ve looked at quite a few pieces of technology in the past few years. Some have addressed massive issues that I had when I was a practicing network engineer. Others have shown me new ways to do things I never thought possible. But one category of technology still baffles me to this day: The technology that assumes greenfield deployment.

For those not familiar, “greenfield” is a term that refers to a project that is built on a site completely from scratch. It originally comes from a day when the project in question was a factory or other capital improvement that was literally being built in a field with green grass growing on top. The alternative to that project was one where something was being built in a location where there was existing infrastructure or other form of site pollution. And, of course because everyone in humanity never gets older than twelve, this is called a “brownfield” site.

Getting back to the technology side of things, let’s talk about greenfield deployments. When was the last time you walked into a building and found zero technology of any kind? Odds are good that’s not the case. Sure, there are some SMBs that have minimal technology. There are a lot of organizations that have just the basics. But the days of walking into a completely empty building and rolling out new PCs, phones, and software loads are gone. So too are the days of zero wireless coverage, no existing networking equipment, and no server hardware.

No matter how big your organization is right now, there is some solution that can get you connected quickly. The number of times that I’ve heard of the office “IT Person” going to a big box store and buying a consumer-grade router to get a couple of MacBooks on the Internet is more than you might think. The need for office phone systems has been supplanted with mobile phones thanks to unlimited minutes and apps that run just about everything now. The infrastructure in the office is now just a wireless router and a subscription to an application suite. If you’re really enterprising you might even have a server or two running in AWS.

What Can Brown Do For Me

The world is brown now. There are no green fields left. Technology has invaded every part of our life. 45% of the world’s population carries a smartphone in their pocket and the number is climbing quickly. Everyone has access to some form of computing device that runs software, whether it’s a phone, PC, laptop, or device in a public place like a library. The Internet is ubiquitous with mobile device data plans and free Wi-Fi springing up in every coffee shop and retail location you can see.

Why then would a company assume there are greenfield deployment opportunities left out there? If you know that companies are going to have some kind of existing infrastructure why would you build a product that assumes otherwise? I understand that when you’re building something that no one has ever seen before that the likelihood of having to replace existing technology is low. But you are still going to need to integrate that exciting new tech with something else, aren’t you?

Building Blocks

Organizations have a mentality of building in phases. We need new capacity in this location so we build it out. Maybe it’s a rack or a pod or a building. The basic idea is the same. We need to add a component so we add it on like it was a Lego brick component. That kind of mentality is helped along by systems that can be deployed quickly in a turnkey fashion. It’s how technology operates today.

But that same turnkey system can become a pariah of technology if it doesn’t interoperate well with the other technology on-site. Build a network fabric that doesn’t play well with others? Your pod deployment is probably going to be a one-off. Build a storage solution that doesn’t interface well with virtual servers? Might not be an additions to that storage unit. Build a backup tool that doesn’t work with cloud storage or volumes? Guess what won’t be getting backed up any time soon?

Developing in a vacuum speeds time to market for sure. But it also tells your customers that you don’t really have much of a plan aside from “we hope you only buy our gear”. Imagine if there was a tire company that released a tire that could only work on a couple of new cars that were just released and not on any other cars on the market. Unless those tires were $2,500 each that company would like go out of business very quickly. Sure, it’s easy to build a high performance tire that only works with those two cars. But what if the people that own those two cars don’t want that tire? Or they don’t want to pay that price for it?

The alternative is to take the extra time and effort to realize that brownfield deployments are the norm now. You can’t hope to build something and not realize people are going to integrate it into their existing infrastructure. It’s reasonable to assume that an enterprise solution is going to replace consumer-grade equipment. It’s also fair to think that a complete solution may or may not replace an existing competing solution. But don’t assume that your technology is going to be deployed somewhere that doesn’t have any technology. Learn how those devices work and figure out how to interface with them. Make it easy for people to manage both the solutions or you may find yourself missing out on a sale.

Tom’s Take

Tom Watson is famous for having said, “There’s a world market for maybe 5 computers.” Of course, he said that almost 80 years ago when computers were in their infancy and the size of a garage. Today, we have computers everywhere. Yet we still see companies that think there’s a market for something that they built that isn’t completely revolutionary. Even with cutting edge technology like AR/VR or ultra mobile computers you still see existing technology as an interface point. It’s time to stop thinking that the world is a verdant field of green just waiting for the right solution to come along. Instead, think of the world as a pile of Lego houses waiting for your solution to be placed right beside it.