D-kriptik Blog

So, I met up with a buddy that founded a company down in North Carolina, and we grabbed a beer at The Ginger Man while catching up and talking tech. My associate threw out some interesting business ideas and recommended that I start doing presentations at meetings of small business organizations in NYC, which is an absolutely terrific idea. And, a great deal of our tech discussion revolved around the concept that software is really no longer something that tech companies should be selling. Instead, those tech companies should be focusing on providing services around the software. Open source gets this right, and even the big software companies are/will be embracing this model.

(Short interlude here… This was last Wednesday (07-12-2005) evening. After this meeting, I had to hop on the N to Astoria to view an apartment, and the viewing literally lasted hours (over 4), which was way too long, especially since I had last eaten around noon. This means I missed the last NYCBUG meeting, which was on a great topic, jails. So, no write-up on NYCBUG meetings this month, unless someone else cares to contribute. Now back to the post.)

This got me thinking I should note some of my thoughts in this blog, so here is a random dump of those thoughts. I do not have any articles referenced in here, but I do not think I am saying anything here that has not been said by someone else before. Comments are welcome, as this is just some abstract ideas and needs to be flushed out. My focus here is on end users and small businesses, and the information technology useful to them.

Selling software is so last century, much like long distance call fees. New software is distributed for free virtually immediately after its development, regardless of a company’s desire to sell it, and we could chat about ways to control that, but I don’t think there is much point in that. Services are what matter now. A company could build custom software into your architecture and then provides services to clients through this infrastructure. Or, a company could give away their software, perhaps even open source it, and then support customers in using it – build a custom architecture for clients out of it, add specific features requested by customers, support customer developers in modifying it, etc. You know, services.

(I remember getting speeches about how building a company around supporting a piece of open source software was ridiculous. It is the services, not the software, that matter, and these companies sell services, not software.)

So, software companies need to become services companies, and many (most?) are. One of the primary reasons for listing Web 2.0 on D-Kriptik’s main page is because of the openness, the interoperability, and the communities involved in Web 2.0. That is part of this services future. And, the web itself is becoming an open platform.

With openness, interoperability, and community, companies will need to distinguish themselves by providing the best services to meet their customers’ needs and strengthen their communities. The underlying software will be a cheap commodity, and only the services will matter. Companies will sell solutions, not products. And, communities will help to enhance those solutions and grow companies. Reputation, which everyone who knows me knows I preach , is one of the cores here.

Some will point out copyright/content protection, in its various incarnations, is being pushed by many big software and media companies, and that in some of the models that help to enable such protection schemes, the actual control of what is running on your computer could be taken out of your hands and placed into these companies’ hands. Of course, the hardware, firmware, and software that support this type of model will be pushed by some software companies unwilling to accept the end of paid software.

If this direction really takes hold, a split will occur between trusted computing platforms that take control out of your hands (closed platforms) and open platforms similar to what we have today (open platforms). (I can see an open platform that is a form of trusted computing platform, but with the control of what runs on that system completely under your control, so the system is still open and your trust is what matters on your system.) Closed platforms will have strong money behind them, and many people, like my mother, do not care enough about open platforms to push back; however, I think enough people want open platforms that closed platforms will not be able to fully dominate. I can think of all the people that have grown up with computers – easily moving digital media around is just a part of their lives. Not to mention, there are many techies that support open systems.

(On open systems that provide a trusted computing model, I can see companies springing up that help end users with configuring such trust.)

Now, I have heard stories about how pirating software costs companies huge sums of money, say multi-billions of dollars (USD) a year for Microsoft. These stories often miss the point that many of the people that are using pirated software would not actually buy it otherwise. In fact, if these users were forced to buy it in order to use it, I think the software companies would end up losing even more business.

If the platforms become closed and people/businesses are forced to either buy expensive software, invest in much more difficult circumvention techniques, or switch to cheaper, open platforms, they will take the latter. So, closed platforms, after their initial push and attempt at dominance, will continue the decline of selling software, and bring about the end of closed systems themselves.

You can see the importance of openness here. The news about the secret distribution of rootkit DRM software by Sony only furthers the push for continued open platforms. Even my parents, non-technical computer users, understood that Sony abused its customers so nonchalantly and that can easily be translated into a distrust of closed platforms.

All of this could be great for a companies like D-Kriptik, and this makes a wonderful world for the customers of these services. This direction is a boon for open software and should be a boost to many open operating systems, desktop environments, development tools, office tools, etc. And, the more money that pumps in here, the better these tools and services will become.

This is the direction things are moving, don’t you think?

Update: A comment from Ray Potter that includes supporting links. And, I just noticed that Apex Assurance Group started a blog. Check it out.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2005 at 1:42 am and is filed under D-Kriptik. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.