Next Generation…. Evolution or Revolution? What is going on here?
The content for this post started over the Fourth of July weekend and grew from there so rather than leave out the 4th relevant commentary.. I thought I would leave it in and provide context.. well.. context provided.
If we cannot talk of revolution on July 4th.. when can we? Independence is a great thing and there are many different flavors.. national independence from tyranny and personal independence from imprisonment (physical or social). Basically, independence from anything that prevents you from making your own decisions or constrains your decision making in any substantial way.
First of all, on this Fourth of July, I am glad to live in a free country, glad to have independence and am mostly eternally grateful for those who still, to this day, fight and risk their lives to keep us so.. everything else is secondary to your sacrifice and commitment.. I thank you!
But on this Fourth of July, I turn my thoughts to less noble ideas about independence. Ideas about how different technical and social movements are introducing newfound independence and opportunities to business. There seem to be too many revolutions to count these days.. Open Source.. Software as a Service.. Social Networking.. and the myriad of permutations.. but are they really independent revolutions or do they intersect? and are they revolutions or just a continuous evolution of behavior?
Once upon a time, in what seems like a far away land (the 90’s – I will leave he time/space discrepancy to other thinkers)..we all decided a business revolution was upon us.. unfortunately, the bubbles burst and the nay-sayers (some would say those lacking vision?) all said.. “we told you so… ” and most people thought that was the end of that.. but wait.. it was just the beginning.. the reality is that the revolutionary ideas and efforts that crashed so dramatically created the foundation for the evolution we have seen in business today. So..are the revolutions associated with Open Source, Software as a Service and Social Networking just adding new building blocks to an ongoing evolution? I think so… yes.. i am fairly certain of it.
Open Source is clearly disrupting the enterprise software business.. redefining what types of technology businesses should pay for and what is enough of a commodity to just “be there..”
Software as a service means business services as dial tone… the difference to just Open Source being business context. Software as a service provides granular services when a business demands it as a business needs to consume it. Open Source can and should provide many of the building blocks for Software provided as a service but not all..a mixed source model is required here… So the connection between open source and Software as a Service is fairly obvious…how does the “revolution” of Social Networks intersect?
Of course, there is the obvious, most Social Networks are built around software constructed using Open Source.. and often times delivered as a collection of services. I would argue that “Open” is a pre-req for any community trying to contribute to the social networking going on. This is clearly why MySpaces has launched ballistic while Friendster and even Linked-In have not..tie together your blog with your Flickr pictures and Delicious bookmarks…Myspaces being completely open provides the forum to tie together different social networks with a common thread.
In the 90’s, we talked about the internet being the great equalizer – to allow Joe’s Shirt Shop to compete with larger stores and while not completely leveling the playing field, it has certainly has increased opportunity for smaller businesses the playing field is still far from level. Larger organizations simply have more resources. This causes an interesting dichotomy for many businesses. How much time and money to spend on enabling technology.. the answer is usually too much and not enough. That is, business leaders spend too much time thinking and worrying about technology AND do not have money to implement solutions that could really matter. It is really a double whammy.. too much time wasted for too little return.
The (r)evolution of software as service offers the hope to break through this kind roadblock for today’s businesses – allow business people to focus on running their business while having access to technology as needed.
The hard part here, for me, is how the social networks truly intersect with the needs of business leveraged by Software as a Service built upon Open Source technology. Again, there are the obvious things..like using social networks to define markets and target ads but there is more here than that I believe… stepping back a bit. and seeing all the different social environements where we volunteer information about ourselves (Amazon wish lists, Linked-In, Flickr, Delicous.net, MySpaces, etc.) it is really astounding. Are we approaching the perfect storm where information, properly mined, can tell us what we what before we realize it? or do we continue to saturate the info-world with segmented data.