O'Reilly on
the Commoditization of Software
Certinaly an interesting proposition, or should I say vision,
but I don't think this proposition does justice to some of the
valid insights contained in this recent IDG
interview with Tim
O'Reilly. Here are some of Tim's quotes:
"Nobody is pointing out something that I think is way more
significant: all of the killer apps of the Internet era: Amazon
(.com, Inc), Google (Inc.), and Maps.yahoo.com. They run on Linux
or FreeBSD, but they're not apps in the way that people have
traditionally thought of applications, so they just don't get
considered. Amazon is built with Perl on top of Linux. It's
basically a bunch of open source hackers, but they're working for a
company that's as fiercely proprietary as any proprietary software
company."
Solutions are always more important that the
technology that makes up the solutions from a business development
perspective. The trouble is that the constituent parts of a
solution ultimately affect the longevity of the solution (the
future adaptability of the solution), hence the middleware and
components segments of the software industry.
"With eBay it's even clearer. The fact is, it's
the critical mass of marketplace buyers and sellers and all the
information that people have put in that marketplace as a
repository."
"So I think we're going to find more and more places where that
happens, where somebody gets a critical mass of customers and data
and that becomes their source of value. On that basis, I will
predict that -- this is an outrageous prediction -- but eBay will
buy Oracle someday. The value will have moved so much to people who
are not now seen as software suppliers."
In reading this article that I can only assume that Tim does
realize the inevitable; computing is, and always will be about data
-- creation, transformation, dissemination, and exploitation. That
said, you don't maximize the opportunities that such a realization
accords by acquiring the largest vendor of database software.
The largest database vendor doesn't imply dominance in any of
the following areas:
- Data Creation
- Data Storage
- Data Access
- Data Dissemination
- Data Exploitation
I see the Internet as the Database (comprising various forms),
and the Web as a dominant database segment within Internet realm.
Every Internet Point of Presence is really a point of Data
interaction; Creation, Storage, Access, Dissemination, and
Exploitation.
eBay can acquire a license from Oracle or any other database
vendor and still be sucessful, and all they need to do is come to
the actual realization that like Amazon and Google they could
become a very important Executable and Semantic Web platform by
finally understanding that their home page isn't that important,
it's the interactions with the site that matter. All of this is
certainly achievable without acquiring Oracle.
In short, this applies to any organization that seeks to
incorporate the Internet into their operational strategy (Business
Development, Customer Services, Intranets, Extranets etc.). I am
inclined to believe that Sofware Commoditization (which has been
with us for a very long time) is the new moniker for "its all about
data" or to quote Sam Ruby, "It's
just data".