Traditional software companies: adapt or perish

Traditional software companies: adapt or perish

Vinnie Mirchandani:Black_Hole_Milkyway

Read this Google paper Data Center as Computer to understand why the average software company which cannot talk about PUEs and CRACs is going to be hopelessly outflanked by the amazon’s and salesforce’s.

Read this note by Dennis Howlett on why “not our problem” will be less and less acceptable as an excuse for a software vendor. Operations Management will become as important a competency as architecture, interface design and testing.

Either software vendors will pick up those competencies really quick, or they will leverage the infrastructure and operations experience of one of the pioneers – as Coda is doing with salesforce.

The disruption is here.  To sloppily paraphrase Bob Dylan, software companies have to get busy being born or get busy dying.  It’s not even about living anymore: if software vendors can’t be reborn into the new market, then they simply won’t survive.  Taking the “same as it ever was” approach is tantamount to getting busy dying.

Dramatic?  Probably.  But there’s lots of drama and noise and gnashing of teeth when something – anything – is facing disruption.  If you’re smart, you see the change coming and adapt to it, even if it means cost, re-org and effort.  If you’re myopic or a serial denier, you’ll get pulled into the event horizon and, well, don’t say you weren’t warned.

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