Will Johnston produces Thinkmedia. I have been involved with technology and product development since 1983 when I bought and started programming my first PC. I was a member of the Apple HyperCard development team, founder of the BuyDirectory (among the first consumer search engines), Sr. Product Manager for PDF at Adobe Systems, Sr. Product Manager for Commerce at Inktomi Corporation and one of the earliest users of the WELL and Usenet.

Thinkmedia provides consulting services for the intersection of technology and business.

Monday, July 01, 2002

Brent Sleeper had this blurb on his weblog, which I feel is very right on about the Web Services market and technology. Seeking Killer Apps.... We collectively have spent a lot of time and energy over the past year or more thinking about web services as an architecture, as a set of standards, as software infrastructure. Good for us.   But so what? Why does it matter to a potential customer of these software companies that their application server (or EAI server, or database software, or whatever) now can "do web services?" What's possible (technically or from a business value perspective) as a result of a service-oriented architecture that couldn't have been done some other way? Is this stuff all simply technology churn to create an upgrade imperative? I don't think so, but software companies need better answers than they've been giving so far.   One example I like to cite is what UserLand has been able to do with the Radio Community Server and the data interactions among individuals participating in the network. It's a great example of new applications that are possible (or at least, more feasible) as a result of web services, but what other ideas are out there? comment [] 3:09:58 PM    . Where do Web Services fit a technology companies business model? Stencil Group Report comment [] 12:00:52 PM    . What does it take to create a successful technology company in the new millenium? One observation I have today regarding technology and business is that the number of channels, or activities taking place has grown exponentially and I'm not sure if this is a good thing or bad for entrepreneurs. I remember in 1985 when there were just a few promising technologies to follow and a limited domain of potential business applications. At that time I saw the promising technologies to be as the Macintosh, the WELL and Usenet, C, AI, OOP and a few other emerging technologies. The sandbox for exploration and entrepreneurial endeavor seemed more manageable and less risky. Now the sandbox is vast with so many technologies emerging in parallel (standards, software tools, infrastructure technologies, hardware) that trying to determine business opportunities seems vastly more complicated and translating these opportunities to success seems inherently much more limited. Having participated in a few startup companies (successful and not) I know that the criteria for success are far more ambiguous. I think the .com bubble is representative of this phenomenon, in that it inspired a lot of venture capital money to explore a range of ways to make technology more adaptable, inter-operable and incrementally enhanced. I don't imagine that this situation will reverse itself, but instead continue to emerge in compexity and lead to more abiguity in determining good opportunities and creating successful ventures from them. So, what is the point I'm trying to make? I think the need exists for business technologists to adopt more sophisticated methods. I can remember when I was at Inktomi, hearing from the Harvard MBA's I worked with, that "this company could do no wrong" and the market cap was justified. Their professors at Harvard Business School had recommended Inktomi as a starting point for their business careers since the Inktomi business model was very promising. Since that time there have been a myriad of competing companies, new technologies created, incremental changes and the air has been let out of the Inktomi bag. What is there to be learned from this and what would we do different next time? How do we assess business opportunities in technology and business models which have substance? comment [] 11:40:51 AM    . Trying to figure out how to get comments working in Radio... it appears that Adam Curry has this working and this is a feature I'd really like. If you know how to enable this, please let me know. comment [] 9:07:42 AM    .

© Copyright 2002 Will S. Johnston. Last update: 08/01/2002; 9:10:17 AM.

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