Comments on: Ray Lane: The Software Business is Dead Man Walking

By: john sung kim

john sung kim — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 21:34:50 +0000

This is the 2nd ASP business I’ve started, and it seems like people are still talking about the “on demand software as a service revolution.”

I guess it’s the 10 year overnight revolution.

Woops, did I say “ASP?” I forgot it’s a dirty word now.

I meant “on demand.”

By: Zia

Zia — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:39:05 +0000

Thanks to Steve for pointing out the Hal Varian article. Not sure if it applies directly to Microsoft; but I do agree that the best companies, experiment from their market leading positions and are therefore more likely to stay ahead. At the fastforward conference in SD, I had the benefit of sitting with Ray Lane and Andrew Schrage over dinner where we had a very heated discussion on Nick Carr and the nature of competitive advantage through IT. While there was by no means any resolution, one concept was generally uncontested. Successful companies use technology to continuously improve and further enhance the inherent business advantage they enjoy. Varian’s article hints at the idea that the most successful Web 2.0 technologies may eventually become the norm; not to say that they won’t matter but that they are embedded into the way a company competes.

By: Steve Bayle

Steve Bayle — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:39:55 +0000

Hal Varian has a good article in today’s NY Times called Kaizen, That continuous improvement strategy, finds its ideal environment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/business/08scene.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Basically its a great argument against SharePoint and for Otter’s integration of Web services. In a nutshell, Web services can and are continuously improved whereas Microsoft takes literally years – 5 in the case of their OS – to upgrade their software

By: John Newton

John Newton — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 12:05:43 +0000

Ray is absolutely right and the reason is the classic disruption of the software value chain and distribution model. The internet just makes sales people irrelevant since it now inconvenient to have a sales person make us aware that his product exists, give us a demo on his time table, negotiate and conclude a complex agreement, and have him facilitate the delivery of physical media. With lower cost of delivery through open source and software as a service, providers can afford to undercut the existing enterprise sales model.

The faster iteration loop made possible through internet-based interaction also has changed the whole design dynamic making the lumbering closed process of traditional enterprise software a major step behind open source and SaaS.

Having been in both the enterprise model (Documentum) and the open source model (Alfresco), the old model was pretty tedious before and downright frightening now. You should hear the panic coming from the enterprise sales guys lately.