One of the unsung facets of working reasonably up in the org structure of a large, successful tech company is that you get a unique view of how the tech media machine works.

Tech writing (like Tech Marketing) is hard, because 1) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, 2) Only magicians really understand the magic, and 3) Magic skill != writing skill. So, back in those ol' days, I wasn't that surprised to find that media pieces often originated in the Marketing departments of big companies, but I am always surprised when media outlets appear to run the Marketing feed unedited.

As a sign that some of the old ways still prevail, today we have the following two, loosely-coupled headlines: Vista success hinges on developers and Developers take advantage of Vista. A nice two-headline tautology.

I'm sure both headlines are valid, but looking at things that shallowly completely misses what's going on in software right now. OEM Agreements guarantee Vista's success - things might be better if developers come aboard, but Vista should do just fine (on every new machine shipped) even if they don't.

This was probably true even back in 2001, when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously cried "Developers! Developers! Developers!", but it really doesn't bear up to scrutiny today. In 20-odd years of mass-market windowed software development, Zawinski's Law ("Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.") - has basically held, and now even the simplest "mainstream" apps offer a staggering amount of functionality.

In the desktop software world, probably 95% of all usage is performed using about a half-dozen applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Browser, Itunes, IM Client). Even if all the developers stay home, that still means that Vista will lose functionality only at the remaining 5% margin.

There are two things worth drawing from the articles: 1) We'll see better software on the Vista platform if developers flock to Vista, but Vista's success does not depend on that flocking, and 2) if you are writing software today you have to be mindful that most (95%, if you accept the guesstimated figure above) of the "horizontal software space" is already filled.

That's not to say that there's not room for great new software, only that great new software isn't going to take a piece of the current pie—the only way to create great new software is to make the pie bigger.

In a later post, I'll talk about models for doing just that.

Make it 12! Predictions and Snowfall

Might as well start with the snowfall first: another twelve inches on the ground today. We've fallen into a pattern - Thursday = storm starts, Friday = storm ends and some chunk of the day is spent digging out. Only a foot today, so maybe the weekly effect is damping out.

But on to my final prediction for 2007 - the Year of the Software Appliance.

I'm working on Pikaplanner, a lean manufacturing application that's designed to be run in a hosted environment. I have a great setup for it, with custom gems installed and a beta version of a hyper-fast Ruby virtual machine. It works great for me, but moving it to a hosting provider has proved problematic.

At this point in our malware-infested world, installing anything new anywhere is a risky proposition. Installing enterprise software can also be time-consuming: back in the day for a decent-size Oracle apps installation you would want to set aside a full week just to get the software installed.

All of these problems (custom environments, malware, and difficult installs) are remedied by the concept of a software appliance. Illustrative of the SA concept, Digium this week announced the release of it's Asterisk VOIP PBX as a software appliance. Asterisk is a terrific product—an open source (free as in beer) IP switching system. This monumental breakthrough in cheap communications systems has seen rapid growth, limited only by the difficulty of getting linux and telephony setup and configured by mere mortals.

Enter the software appliance - a bundle that includes the operating system, all the extra packages needed, and the VOIP switch software all pre-configured and delivered to be run virtual player environment. A tricky install becomes a simple, 30-minute exercise.

This is revolutionary—VMware (popular maker of virtualization products, recently acquired by EMC) products are generally already well-accepted in corporate IT departments, and encapsulated applications take a lot of the risk out of new software deloyments. SO ... if you want my Pikaplanner (complete with customized environment), all I need to do is package it up, lock, stock and barrel, and deliver it as a software appliance. The "tricky install" and "customer environment" problems are solved in one fell swoop.

A software appliance is completely contained within its virtual environment, so if you're worried about security, just throw the appliance away and start again!

That's really only the beginning. If you write linux-based applications and need to deliver them in a Windows-only environment, just package up an appliance and run it in a virtual space on that Windows machine.

I can barely scratch the surface here, but VMWare turbocharged the software-appliance idea with their VMWare Player, Xen is white-hot in pursuit of the same idea, and the force of it is so powerful that even Microsoft has to conform to it..

Billy on Open Source has some terrific writings on the software appliance idea. There's a lot more to discuss here, so for now I'll leave my final prediction that "2007 is the year of the software appliance."

Since a new year beckons, and this is a blog, it follows that predictions for the new year must follow. Hey, rules are rules. And so, with no further adieu, here are my predictions for 2007:

Easy Calls:

1) Microsoft Vista comes, new machines get it, nobody on XP upgrades. Microsoft will be content to turn over their installed base with new machines sold and old machines obsoleted. Otherwise, upgrades will be slower than currently forecast.

2) Apple delivers Leopard, new machines get it, but upgrades are slower than currently forecast. Tiger is sufficiently good, and external packages (e.g VirtueDesktops) simulate a lot of the new functionality. Apple has a big decision to make, between adding functionality for the IPod/digital home, and functionality for business and enterprise solutions.

3) Linux will continue plodding progress in '07, and boom in '08. Linux has a lot to recommend it - including good security, scalability, and cost. Its openness makes it impervious to horrible, enterprise-inappropriate additions (DRM), and has a huge leg up on 64-bit solutions. If Ubuntu can continue advancement of a plausible desktop system, Linux will start taking Mac users in '07 and MS users in '08.

4) Dynamic languages will keep making inroads on "traditional" (.Net and J2EE) development. Compared to compiled C++, Ruby is one slow language in execution, but there are *so* many available processing cycles that development savings dominate. It won't run Google or the would-be Googles, but it's fast enough for everybody else. The second wave of RoR apps will appear.

5) Ajax is here to stay, and full page refreshes will disappear in 2007. Good packages (such as Prototype), and the ease of integration in new environments (Ruby on Rails) make ajaxification easy for new applications. Existing apps will ajaxify or be replaced by ajax'd apps.

6) Google backlash begins. Past a certain size, it gets really hard to not "be evil." Google has passed that size, and the leading edge isn't willing to give them a pass anymore. Look for one new search engine to break on top of the pack.

Wild Swags:

7) Oracle buys SAP. Alexander the Great "wept, because he had no more worlds to conquer." Larry Ellison does not weep, and SAP is all that is left. The current permissive antitrust environment won't last forever, so Oracle goes Exxon-Mobil(e) in '07.

8) Indian IT giants start buying second- and third-tier US software providers. Outsourced development from the US to India is now commonplace; the next logical step is Indian vertical integration into the American market. Wilder swag: Wipro buys Lotus assets from IBM.

9) Google buys Ebay. See 7) above. "Froogle" has gone nowhere, Ebay got spat out of China. Google has innovative IT at scale, Ebay needs innovative IT at scale. Match made in heaven, and these kinds of deals won't find a favorable approval environment forever.

Final Swag:

10) Innovators rule. Vista is great looking, but is it a compelling upgrade if DRM restrictions give new users less control than they have now? Apple is also wading into DRM waters that make sense for IPods but not for enterprise-anything. Oracle has its hands full with Fusion, and if you like the JD Edwards, Peoplesoft or Siebel software you're running you might not want to Fuse in '07. As Tony Curtis once said: "In confusion there is profit." '07 looks like a great year for disruptive technologies and solutions.

"Life must be understood backward. But...it must be lived forward." Kierkegaard

Credit Bill Gates and Microsoft with being the first to realize that there was a mass market for software "on every desk and in every home." Software Economics 1.0 said 1) software had high fixed costs of development, 2) software had essentially zero marginal costs of delivery, and thus 3) the first to mass scale would rule all, and throw off incredible free cash flow in doing so.

Software 1.0 was sold by license, delivered on media, where new license sales are good, ongoing support revenue is ok (a necessary evil), and addition services (given that they deliver lower margins than license sales) are bad.

This model drove Microsoft (and to a lesser extent Oracle, SAP and other giants, who were more willing to flirt with independent P/L services businesses, for themselves or their partners). Microsoft still operates essentially this way (waiting for that Vista upgrade license revenue stream) today.

Still, software had no sooner left the garage than two giant holes began to appear in the model. Firstly, upgrading software is painful, and the incentives for the buyer to take and install software shrink as the software grows to meet the business need. Given that Windows XP is pretty good, will businesses really want to absorb the deployment/support costs to adopt Vista?

The second problem with the Software 1.0 model is that fixed costs become so dominant that only the leading players can stay in the game. Prior to all the acquisitions (PeopleSoft/JD Edwards, Siebel, etc.), Oracle needed to maintain a staff of 5,000+ application programmers, not to chase down SAP, but merely to stay credible the applications software business.

Leave it to the Children of the Corn to find a new way...

A number of commenters have speculated about what Microsoft would create after Vista - with the idea being that the market has moved beyond large, monolithic systems deliveries. Google, and specifically Google Labs, is the new delivery model, and in the next couple of posts I'm going to speculate on how the industry evolved to this point, and what it implies for software delivery going forward.

I was a VP at Oracle at one of the specific points when the industry turned, and there are a lot of interesting things to draw from the evolution, and Larry Ellison's (among others) vision for the future. Larry has (cultivates, maybe) an image as a maverick at least, maybe even a crazy man, but in the evolution of software he's been crazy like a fox, and his vision has been spot-on. Next up: The Year Zero: 1994-1995.

My son Bryan has hockey games today and tomorrow, and I get to be game reporter and web scribe for them, as I've been all season. They play; I watch and write up game summaries for the web.

This is the state of the user web experience as we enter 2007. All I have to do is write and press a button, and presto - the whole world can read the game summary (my breathless prose can be found here). Anyone can do it, and lots of "anyones" are.

Anyone today can "write" for the web without having to "program" for the web—the web experience isn't about programming anymore. Dvorak is right: Microsoft FrontPage (the first webbing tool I ever used) is dead, and blogging has killed it.

The King is dead! Long live the BLOG.