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Many enterprise software companies are faced by the need to change in order to adapt to a market th is based more than ever on open source.
There are very interesting discussion on the adaptations that these companies have to undergo in order to adapt to this changing world.
One article that I liked is that of Guy Smith:
The rumors of the death of enterprise software are premature, but a near-fatal diagnosis is not. Fundamental shifts in the competitive landscape are, at the very least, changing R&D practices, pricing, marketing, promotions, and buyer attitudes. The software industry that we all grew up with is indeed dead.
By swallowing a dose of reality and re-tooling their positioning, product and sales strategies now, most enterprise software vendors will live long enough to compete in the open-source era.
A response on Business two zero
I can understand the need for a doom laden headline to get readers attention, but quotes like “the rumours of the death of enterprise software are premature, but a near-fatal diagnosis is not” or “with little effort a commodity stack can be deployed for 95 percent of all IT buyers” overstate the case. With these dramatic exaggerations, Guy is in danger of turning off some readers before they get to the important messages in his piece. There definitely is a shift going on in Enterprise software and Open Source is an important factor, but like Software as a Service (SaaS) debate, those commentators who talk about these new approaches as being the death of the traditional model go too far, and Guy gets to that conclusion at the end of his piece when he talks about rebirth. It’s important to realise that Open Source, SaaS and the traditional licencing model are just three different delivery models that software developers can chose between, or try combine in a hybrid approach. These come together with the new economics of media and marketing provided by today’s Internet, as well the availability of low cost development resources from India, Eastern Europe and elsewhere to challenge the current Enterprise software cost and maintenance model, and consequently the old order itself.
Well I certainly predict a lot of brainstorming on the topic in the enterprise software companies but it does seem that we are basically in need a new balance and some changes and not really an end of an era.
