Computing Supply and Demand
I was impressed with this interview with Greg Papadopoulos, Sun Microsystem’s new CTO. First comment that caught my attention was when he said, “I think the biggest piece of crap going around right now is that this is a mature industry and innovation doesn’t matter.” He goes on at length about how improvements in computing efficiency impact the cost equation: “You have this exponential improvement in computing, but ERP is not getting exponentially complex. So you would certainly expect it to get cheaper. If you went to a CFO and said, “I can give you a million times more computing power,” they would say, “OK, I’m not going to close my books every millisecond, so you are going to give it to me at a millionth of the cost.” But if you go to an R&D department or to Wall Street, they will say, “Please, bring it on.” I think we can actually free-up dollars from other parts of the business. They would definitely see a competitive return doing better simulation of product development, for instance.”
That’s exactly howI see it, too. People are crazy if they think software is played out. He also has some interesting things to say about “utility computing”, web services, and outsourcing.