Every web application is in “beta” these days. It’s these pesky developers excusing buggy software by saying “we’re working on it, so expect a few quirks”. Can’t they deliver quality? Not really, folks, sorry. Business is too quick nowadays.
The appeal of web applications is their ease of maintenance. No need to install or upgrade locally. Launch your web browser, type in the web address and you’re already using the newest version. For business units this means they can keep rolling out tweaks and new features daily. Obviously they shouldn’t because things take time to develop and test properly. But if they’re not quick enough, competition will be, will outrun them and put them out of business.
So we, the IT people, are at war now with Business. We demand time to ensure quality, they demand speedy development and deployment. And since business pays, they win, we submit and can only beg customers for forgiveness by calling our software “beta”.