Beta Doesn't Always Mean Bad

Stephen Hultquist used the beta of an application called SugarSync that was supposed to synchronize all his project-management data on Curio on his Mac. The app corrupted the data he had been gathering for a year – and it synchronized the corruption across all machines. He couldn’t open it.

“Fortunately, the guys at (Curio parent company) ZenGobi knew about this and were able to help me fix the bundle so I could get my data back, but needless to say, that’s pretty scary,” said Hultquist, acting CIO for Firefly Energy, a company focused on making more earth-friendly batteries.

That’s the classic cautionary tale of beta software: Many people would say, with apologies to the old “Super Chicken” cartoons, “You knew the software was dangerous when you took it.”

But there’s a revolution going on – or at least an evolution – in thinking about use of beta software within the organization.

On the one end of the spectrum is the traditional view that beta software should be walled off for testing so it can’t do any damage to the core business. On the other end is the view that employees should be free to download and use whatever they want – an approach more likely to be advocated by companies offering their own on-demand software.

“I’ve seen situations where beta versions have capabilities that previous versions don’t and that can be capabilities needed now in the organization...”

Stephen Hultquist: Firefly Energy

Serena Software takes the latter view and in fact recently migrated the whole company, more than 700 people, from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps in a move that, at $50 a user per year, the company has said will save $1 million in three years. A year in the planning stages, it had intended to make the move last fall, but waited for the Gmail offline capability, which was released to Google Labs in January.

Ron Brister, Serena’s IT director, said Google’s view of beta is different.

“It may say ‘beta’ on the calendar or on Docs, but it’s not really in beta, it’s just constantly evergreening. … They’re generally pretty well vetted by the time they get into Google Labs,” he says.

“We’ve had different employees run a number of different ones and they’ve all seen quite a bit of success with them, really.”

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