The Future of IT
A lot of this is fiscal. Development requires paying talent, and talent
costs money. Finidng ways to distribute and amortize those costs over
the widest possible consumer base is what drive the whole wagon. That's
why software development companies rather than in-house software
development is the norm, and that's why DRM is such a touchy subject,
because any crack in tight copy control dilutes the amortization curve.
It's also why outsourcing is so huge, because it drops the talent price, plain and simple.
Also, to jmgarvin's point, the typical IT consumer (read: non-techie)
wants to use information technology the same way he drives a car--with
minimal undertsanding of the basic drive mechanism, minimal maintenance
responsibilities, and high degree of certainty that the product will
operate relaible 99.999% of the time.
To me, the answer here is to lean into all this, rather than fight it.
Loathe though I am to ever say IBM is insightful, their notion of
relying on IT services rather than products is a wise one. Enterprise
conusmers want a specified service level at a specified cost, and they
don't truly care what hardware or software is needed to run it, any
more than I care what servers Google uses to build their search engine.
I want good search results, and whatever Google does to deliver that
quality of service is OK with me.
Embracing utility IT is inevitable, especially when it will place the
quality of servcie at the forefront of the IT equation, and it will
break the software megaliths' stranglehold on feature bundling. I for
one can't wait.
