Frank Buytendijk Blog

Tom Hudock, from the weblog, "BI for Business People," reacted to the "Future of IT" series.  He said the following:

I like your post on "power back to the nerds" and "where's the exclusivity." I wonder, is exclusive software really going to give businesses a competitive advantage? If you look at the operations of a business, efficiencies are gained from using common products and methods thus reducing costs (and hopefully increasing profits). Those more efficient companies have a competitive advantage. Now bring this model of reducing costs to the software world. Wouldn't it be cheaper to puchase COTS software that other customers have also purchased? Or use common methodologies, such as ITIL, to reduce risks & costs? The competitive advantage is from how well you implement, apply, and use these common products and methods. I have a hard time seeing a world where the cost of exclusive (custom) software for each company is cheaper than COTS. I agree exclusive software would give more power to technology and IT people. And I agree that software will become more complicated, but hopefully not for the consumer. I like the simplicity of my iPod.

Tom rightfully points out the efficiencies of standard software. And I don't disagree! But what happens if that all of a sudden is not the most important thing anymore. What happens if the advantages of exclusivity, in terms of knowledge, innovation or first mover advantage, outweigh efficiency? What happens if people start finding an expert-device more cool to handle than the simplicity of the iPod? Who will be the winners and the losers then? Are we ready for a paradigm shift, whatever it may turn out to be?

--frank