Steve Gillmor graciously invited me to participate in this week’s Gillmor Gang podcast, with Doc Searls, Dan Farber and Dana Gardner. If you have 80 minutes to kill, you can find the recording here.
Hewlett-Packard has published excerpts from my “End of Corporate Computing” article on its web site. You can find it here. “While some in the industry dispute the exact details and timing of the ‘utility revolution,’ at HP we share Mr. Carr’s fundamental vision,” writes HP senior vice president Nora Denzel in an introduction. I consider that a buy signal for HP stock.
Elsewhere, CNET’s Jim Kerstetter and Elinor Mills provide a good overview of the dilemma Microsoft faces in responding to the shift to software as a service – and how a revamped MSN (as a services rather than a content portal) may be the cornerstone of a new Microsoft strategy.
Nick, this posting has 2 dimensions:
1. Does IT matter? Well the answer is simply this – purely speaking, IT infrastructure offers you no competitive advantage. It is the importance of how it gels with the other things you are offering is what makes it worthwhile. Take the case of ERP or CRM installations. All the companies will end up implementing something or the other for the vendors Oracle, SAP, Seibel which offer a *standard* package. If implementing ERP/CRM was just the solution, no one was better off. Its how you customize the standard package to meet your requirements is what makes you competitive in business. Otherwise there would be a large gap between the “haves” (who have implemented ERP) and the “have nots”. A company like Dell doesnt use any SCM solution from these vendors mentioned above but still offers the best turnaround and most efficient supply chain in the game. Its like saying that installing a telephone gives you competitive advantage. Unfortunately the people who use it and the way they use it matters more than the make and brand of the telephone.
2. Security and Saas: One of the concerns SaaS prospects have is security. People say they are not comfortable having their data hosted at a datacentre over which they have no control on. In a way thats a valid point. However sample this:
– Most of us have credit card information in our emails on Yahoo and Hotmail. If not there, then its on our employer’s email server.
– Many of our personal and confidential documents and photos lie somewhere on our ISP’s servers
None of us lose sleep on these. I agree its not the same for individuals and corporations. At the same time, SaaS vendors are cognizant of this fact that security is a concern and they are leveraging it as an opportunity, rather than a threat. We must also understand that a poorly run IT infrastructure is not more secure. The recent Credit Card database theft is an apt illustration of this point.
Comments are welcome at nit_goyal@yahoo.com
Nitin, I agree that ultimately security is more of an opportunity for utility IT providers than a threat. Most companies are kidding themselves if they think their current, fragmented, do-it-yourself IT model is more secure than a centralized model maintained by companies whose entire business viability hinges on security. I think when users talk about their security concerns with the utility model, what they’re really talking about is trust. They need to have deep trust in the suppliers, and it’s up to the suppliers to earn that trust.