08.25.06
Office 2.0
I am going to be a panelist for Office 2.0 conference coming up in San Francisco in Oct. I think the logistics is being worked out right now, but we have a good list of speakers lined up. What’s different between Office 2.0 and Web 2.0 is that Office 2.0 is SMB focused vs consumer. It is funny to see the full circle of centralized computing. When I first started my career, I was a programmer on MVS and VMS with those hunky mainframe machines with dumb terminals. Now, the dumb terminals are being replaced by thin clients, cell phones and web browsers, and hunky mainframes are being replaced by server farms with LINUX and Open Source stacks. The difference is that software is being delivered more and more as service on demand or just free open source download with support contracts (* join me at another event on open source business model). What this means is that more and more computing power and intelligence is shifting back to the center and it presents huge opportunities for the technology providers such as HP with a combination of hardware, software and services to provide value.
Steve Spalding said,
September 5, 2006 at 7:59 pm
More and more it seems like the future of software, the real value models are going to be service based. Especially if the current trend in open source continues and the software becomes more robust. Soon, it will be difficult to convince savvy entrepreneurs (many of whom have grown up knowing little more than open source) that traditional enterprise software is the only answer to their problems.
It really is an interesting climate we are living in. Good post.