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Poll: Computer Technology Trends
Poll: What Area Of Technology Do You Believe Is Most Likely To Consolidate To A Single Predominant Industry Standard/Brand?
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Posted 6 months ago It seems as different areas of computer technology mature over time, that there should be clear front runners, and among these, the emergence of a dominant brand/product in each area of technology. While there might be the necessity to have at least two front runners for the sake of competition, putting that aside--will technologies eventually converge, giving rise to a vastly superior product/brand, whether by superior design or a de facto standard among users? Or will the ever-increasing advances and fragmented evolution in computing and storage capabilities dictate that we continue to have multiple flavors of computer technologies? |
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| Posted 5 months ago Consolidation is driven by the collective health of the competitive set. Productivity apps have long ago collapsed to a single brand -- Microsoft owns that space. I am curious to see if OpenOffice will ever make any significant inroads on the desktop -- it's a solid offering, and the compatibility gap with MS Office continues to close at a seemingly increasing pace. Open file format standards will help, but it may be too little too late. Database would follow suite but for the relative competitive strength of Microsoft's SQL Server brand. Oracle has pretty much eaten everyone else's lunch in the enterprise database market, and now they own the most popular no-cost/low-cost alternative as well. IBM's DB2 is still somewhat of a player, but for how long? The server OS market is still realtively healthy, what with Linux keeping Windows at bay on commodity hardware, and HP-UX/Solaris/AIX running the big iron. The application server market is another one that continues to consolidate, but is unlikely to collapse to a single brand. Microsoft and Oracle form the sides while Red Hat's JBoss and IBM's Websphere seem to fill in the middle. There is also a healthy FOSS presence there. Virtualization is way too hot right now to experience much consolidation. The Oracle acquisition of Sun may serve to raise the temperature even higher, IF they decide to capitalize on Sun's excellent xVM technology. Larry, please just give it a decent enterprise management console, ok? Microsoft's Server 2008 licensing terms will drive more virtualization their direction, while VMware has just launched vSphere4 and that will also generate a lot of interest. The storage market also continues to have healthy competition between HP, IBM EMC and other players. So you can see how competitive forces work to keep a market niche from imploding. We can only hope that the current economic woes do not disturb these market ecosystems too much. My boss never down-sizes, right-sizes, outsources or has lay-offs, and He's always hiring. I work for Jesus! Prepare your resume! |
