Mark,

I am guessing that the author has never gone through the pain of a
transition from one corporate computing platform or architecture to another.

Migration within a family is generally made simple because the vendors
involved understand that in order to sell upgrades, the old stuff must work
with the new stuff.  New features come out and the world is somehow a
better place (e.g., money is saved, time is made available and productivity
is increased).

Changing from a set of hardware, OS software and vendors to another is
never as simple as the wide eyed sales rep will have you believe.  Such
changes may involve changes in the way business is conducted within an
organization, which can be problematic for a company.  Changes also mean
(or should mean) parallel testing operations, user training costs and a
variety of other implications.  All these changes imply bad things for the
corporations who do them, so the net benefit to the company had better be
apparent and significantly outweigh the pain of the process.

During the days which the author refers to the "never being fired for
buying IBM" reference, IT professionals who followed the admonition did not
turn their operations up side down and cost their company a lot of money to
transition.  Regardless of any vendor's perspective, migrations to a
completely new platform are costly, disruptive and take time away from
doing business (see the recent Novell "Shirts?  We *make* shirts, sir" ad
running on cable these days in America).

This does not mean that vendors should ignore trends.  The irony is that I
think IBM lost its market position because of some of its management's
arrogance toward a new platform (PC) and ended up chasing the very market
space it was largely responsible for creating.

I suppose to address your question as how this fits with OPENMPE, a real
emulation platform that does not involve significant user retraining and
costs to migrate software is a good thing because it mitigates the
organizational chaos and so thus the interest and support of those who
depend upon MPE environments for their business.

Bottom line, contrary to the author's views, I think it is not about IT
Monopoly Addiction, it is about saving one's company from costs,
disruptions, frustrations and other issues of major platform
transformations which do not always yield the significant benefits promised
for the effort.

The author's reference to open standards as being the future seems to fly
in the face of any vendor's desire to lock in customers.  As such, I am not
so sure about his point. Think about the implications, if all vendors sold
vanilla ice cream that was made the same way, how would a given vendor
differentiate itself in the market?  While I support open standards, I also
understand the difficult position these open standards put vendors into.

Look at the automobile industry at the beginning of the last century.  A
very open standard - hundreds of vendors.  Funny how we now only seem to
just have the big two American automobile makers today.  If history tells
us anything about this, it might be that the entities with the most cash
will run any "open standard" (if you have never seen the movie Tucker, it
might offer some insights on this). I think history is a good teacher.

Best,

Alan Maitland
[log in to unmask]
The Commerce Company - Making Commerce Simple(sm)
http://WWW.Commerco.Com/

(Shameless self promotion: If you want to see the movie "Tucker:The Man and
His Dream" - try getting it through an online DVD rental service.  Find
such services through http://WWW.DVD.Renting.Net/ - a Commerco portal).

At 09:14 AM 3/6/03 -0500, you wrote:
>No opinion, just read this before I got the post and wondered what some
>think it means to OpenMPE.
>
>http://www.computerworld.com/news/2003/story/0,11280,78694,00.html
>
>IT's Monopoly Addiction
>
>By DAN GILLMOR
>FEBRUARY 24, 2003
>
>Content Type: Opinion
>Source: Computerworld
>
>Information technology folks must love monopolies. Otherwise, you wouldn't
>help create them.
>
>Sure, you complain about lock-in, vendor arrogance, high costs and all the
>other woes that come with monopolies and the cozy oligopolies that seem to
>arise in so many industries -- but notably in IT.
>
>I don't think you're stupid or naive when you resign yourself to your fate.
>You are clearly aware of the upside and downside of doing business with
>dominant vendors. But you're addicted. Or, in pop psychology lingo, you're
>co-dependent.
>
>The easiest explanation is the near-universal wish for standards.
>Competition -- such as railroad tracks with different gauges -- can be
>messy, as we've seen again and again. Users and suppliers gravitate toward
>single standards.
>
>In technology development circles, no one wants to test a variety of devices
>and platforms, much less develop for all of them. One of my brothers, a
>software guy, says he'd be happiest -- in theory -- with just one operating
>system.
>
>It still seems obvious to me that, in a world where information is the
>currency of the future, it's dangerous to allow one company or a small group
>of companies to control the standards. But it seems less obvious,
>apparently, to the U.S. government and most buyers of technology.
>
>Monocultures in the physical world are widely understood to be risky. We are
>moving that way, unfortunately, in things like farming -- where a single
>virus could, in theory, wipe out much of the world's corn crop in a single
>season, leading to untold human suffering. Yet our food supply is based on
>monocultures because they're more efficient. Today.
>
>And that leads to the other main reason why monopolies, duopolies and
>oligopolies keep springing up: They're good business, largely because
>they're more stable -- temporarily, at any rate -- for buyers as well as
>sellers.
>
>The desire for stability and accountability can be summed up in the
>once-popular saying "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Substitute
>Cisco, Microsoft or other big names, and the idea is much the same.
>
>When IBM was absolute master of the IT universe, technology wasn't changing
>as quickly as it does today. But even then, buyers were looking for a level
>of security, an assurance that what they were buying would still be working
>tomorrow and that someone would stand behind it.
>
>The velocity of technological progress today gives even greater advantage,
>certainly in the short term, to the dominant companies, and for some of the
>same reasons. But does it also lead to long-term power? I believe it does,
>largely because of people's -- and institutions' -- logical aversion to
>disruption.
>
>The path of least resistance is to buy into whatever is dominant today.
>That's a mistake.
>
>I have a policy for my personal technology purchasing. I balance my
>dependence, supporting nondominant companies whenever possible. I support
>worthwhile competitors, and sometimes I give up some small conveniences in
>the process -- provided, of course, that the choices I make don't put me at
>a serious disadvantage in my work.
>
>That's one approach. IT can do some of this, but it should employ another
>tactic, too: Push much harder for open, non-owned standards.
>
>Cost is only one issue. The other is safety. I'm betting that open standards
>will soon be seen as the best approach for security, an increasingly
>important notion in a dangerous world. Disregard this at everyone's risk.
>
>Dan Gillmor is technology columnist at the San Jose Mercury News. Contact
>him at [log in to unmask]
>
>Source: Computerworld