A quick look into the evolution of Information Technology tells us how the needs from the focused groups have shaped up the innovation in Information Technology. 1950s saw scientists in the labs coming up with first generation of technology for the scientific research, it was then lapped up by the Defense departments in 1960s for the military needs. In 1970s, very large Corporations started making use of Information Technology, primarily for batch processing, file transfer in electronic format etc. 1980s saw large organizations automating internal processes and running the batch processes on mainframes. With 1990s, medium business started adopting Technology for automation and B2B communication. Starting 1990 computing started entering into the houses. By 1995 with Windows, Microsoft changed the face of personal computing for ever. This fueled the growth of consumer internet during late 1990s and early 2000. By now technology cycles became shorter and things started evolving much faster.
Fast forward to early 2000s, we see the next generation of Technology innovation was primarily driven by end consumer needs , the volume of traffic and the humongous data that was getting generated due to sudden rise in websites and web users. By early 2010s Smart phone usage started taking over other forms of personal computing. During early 2000s, Google made many path breaking technological innovation (Big Table, distributed file system etc) while trying to handle millions of web searchers. Those technologies in turn set the direction of next generation Technology. Launch of Apple App Store in 2008 can be considered as another landmark event in this phase.
So, it was no more the demands from Business or Defense Depts that were pushing the limits. It was all about consumers and Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon became the flag bearers.
Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple -are all very different companies. If one has to take a guess on their primary identity, it would probably look like - Amazon is the seller, Apple is the product guy, Facebook is the marketer and Google helps you sell. While Amazon and Apple sell their produce directly to the end consumers, Facebook and Google are the market exchange where the sellers & marketers get to meet potential buyers and they primarily sell Ad space.
Each of these companies are pushing the limits of traditional Engineering & Technology backed by insight into end consumer needs or by creating end consumer need. They are redefining computing as it existed.
Although they did not start as Technology companies, but today they control the new frontiers of the Technology and pose serious threat to traditional technology vendors. Apple and Google control Mobile App technologies and the ecosystems. Apple along with Google defines the new age computing devices. Facebook leads the API economy and literally owns a parallel Web (45 million Facebook Fan pages vs 350 million websites). Amazon and Google control the new age computing environments - AWS and GCE. Google controls the World wide web.
What distinguishes them from the traditional Technology players like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP is their control over the data or the content and their strategy to go deeper into that. This leaves the traditional technology vendors with no option but to do a catch up job in the new world order. Of the traditional Tech vendors, Microsoft probably stands the best chance to remain a dominant player in the new world with their Azure and Windows Mobile offerings. Lets take a quick look into their evolution.
Amazon started as an online book seller, diversified to add many new product categories to eventually become the largest eCommerce company (and poses serious threat to traditional brick and mortar merchants like Walmart). Amazon used their early mover's advantage and insight into end consumer need to start doing the backward integration. They identified newer areas that can scale, they moved to e-books then to Audio books. Like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos also knew this very well, it is the superior consumer experience that matters the most and the most important piece here is the reader. This enables Amazon to control end-to-end quality and creates an entry barrier that most of the competitors will find difficult to break through. In the whole process, very diligently Amazon built unique capabilities and leverage that to enter into a new market. Amazon used Technology to drive the cost down and build an impenetrable entry barrier as a Cost Leader. With their strategy of cost leadership and the burgeoning sales, Amazon had their own need to build a Technology infrastructure that can scale, scale and scale.They invested heavily there and made use of the unused capacity to create a new market called "Cloud Computing". Since then Cloud based computing has empowered scores of developers and fueled the next generation of Technology innovation.
If superior product design and engineering was one major factor behind Apple's success the other one was their ability to serve the content for those devices through iTunes. iTunes also created an entry barrier that most of the other players like Sony etc could not break through just by superior product design and Engineering. Apple duplicated the success theory of iPod + iTunes again with iPhone + App Store. iTunes enabled Apple to control the digital entertainment content and App Store helped them control a new form of content "Apps". Apple's Technology Platform for the mobile Apps still leads the pack. Another example of how content and consumer IT shaping the future of technology.
Google's case is more obvious given the fact that they are necessarily the entry point to world wide web and controls what content a web surfer gets to see. With Google+, Gmail, photo sharing and other consumer specific Apps (Google Now, Google Awesome), they are gradually zeroing into every consumer and pretty much knows what a consumer is doing or looking for. Through Android OS and Play Store, Google remained a dominant player in the new world order and created amazing assets for future revenue. With their control over the traditional web coupled with the growth of Android OS and g+, they probably control most of the digital content in the world. Google followed Amazon's footstep to rent out their computing infrastructure through
Google Compute Engine. These technology offerings have used Google's need for scale and consumer centric data as their test bed and probably miles ahead in terms of Engineering excellence and tooling as compared to traditional tech vendors. Google's Technology offering spans from back-end computing (what users can not see) to front-end OS, Apps (what users experience) and most probably the strongest of all.
Facebook's case is probably not as obvious as others. But remember, Facebook is probably the strongest when it comes to consumer data and API access to that data. Their control over data is not just limited to consumer data, Facebook hosts more than 45 million Fan pages, these pages are far more dynamic in terms content & updates when compared to regular web. User engagement of each post talks about the quality of the content. Overall there are 200 million+ Fan pages, Groups and Communities in Facebook. API access to those data would be absolutely critical for the future of the Web and Apps. I will not be surprised (in fact I will expect) if Facebook start charging the developers for the API access.
Of rest, Microsoft probably stands the best chance but their access to content and user data is shallow. A lot depends on how their Mobile platform does. It also depends on how Microsoft can make use of other consumer centric offerings like Skype, Outlook email, Bing Search, Xbox, Zune and the most important their App Store. Microsoft is still the single biggest entity when it comes to desktop computing and owns MS Office. A clear focus and tight integration among them would be critical for MS's success and to remain relevant.
It's evident that Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook are going to control the world of technology for foreseeable future and Microsoft stands a good chance as well.
So, what's next? What else is seen on the horizon? Well, the answer is - no one knows. However, if I have to take a shot, here is what I think is going happen in next few years.
A critical & big changing pattern is really around smarter tools - development as well as runtime environments and how accessible they have become to the developers. AWS, Azure, Rackspace, and GCE have democratized the Software development process. Now an individual developer has access to all the resources at pittance. To add to it, the developer happens to be the consumer as well and can relate to consumers need personally. Powered by all the resources of the world, developers are going ahead and developing what they love.
This is very different when compared to traditional enterprise world software development where often developers are clueless about what they are developing adding to the high failure rate of the software projects and leading to higher average cost. That doesn't mean projects don't fail outside the boundary of companies. In fact, there the failure rate is higher, albeit with few distinct differences - there is no one to assume the risks for the developers and when they fail, they fail fast and that helps keep the sunk cost to a lower amount. Second, large part of the software development challenges are not only about the business problem, in fact, it is more about the underlying infrastructure, the architecture & design required to achieve HA, DR, Scalability, Serviceability etc. Now, all these new age cloud based computing environments provide all these things and more at the same place. This has reduced the need for big project management, corporate discipline and the necessity for system, structure and process, usually required for big scale software development.
This empowerment of common developers resulted into development of thousands of consumer focused Apps in last few years. However, earning money in that space has been far more challenging when compared to Enterprise world. So, in coming days we can expect to see some of those developers turning their head towards the Enterprise Software Market and start disrupting the enterprises, industry after industry and some would start challenging the control of large Tech Companies over Enterprise software world with their expertise and all the cool technologies that they have access to.
So, what we would eventually see is very large but limited number Tech Companies providing the computing platform, environment, technology, APIs and large number of independent smart developers to small but agile organizations making use of them but mostly outside the boundaries of intermediate large tech companies.
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