The enterprise acquisition process hasn't changed

There are some mistruths in the article - it states "Big Companies Don’t Have Credit Cards Purchasing anything in a large organization requires a rigorous justification process that generally culminates in a purchase order (PO). They do not allow their employees to use their credit cards to buy technology off of the Internet. In fact, at many companies, doing so and attempting to expense it after the fact is a fire-able offense." Which is not true at all. The US Government uses credit cards, many employees have one and I know for sure that the US Border Patrol vehicles have a credit card assigned to each vehicle (with a no approval needed limit of $2500 per purchase). My wife works for a large university and also has a department issued credit card.

Also I object to "If you work in a startup, you might wonder why large organizations don’t just trust their people to make smart purchasing decisions. If an employee needs a new technology, why wouldn’t the company just let him do the right thing? There are many reasons:" In the case of my wife's most recent laptop she did have some restrictions - it had to come from the University computer store which limited her choice to Apple, Dell, Lenovo or HP. Some limit. Oh, and it had to be under $2000.

He also states "Some of the systems are outdated, complex, and downright arcane. Nonetheless, once deployed, enterprises develop great affection for the technology that runs their companies. They may complain about it, but like an old woman speaking of her spouse, the underlying love is far stronger than the criticism. And big companies expect you to love their old products too – by integrating with them." I believe that this is also incorrect. I don't think businesses love their old systems, just that they are stuck with them. The business needs to function everyday, it can't just try something new, it needs to keep going. So old systems become like a heroin addiction for the company. They would love to get off the 30 year old stuff, but they can't. So they adapt (or get you to adapt) and keep plugging along with the old setup.