Thursday, March 27, 2003

Bad Technology Options I was talking with some of my friends today about the lack of good technology companies out there while lunching at the Rainforest Cafe. It is strange that there appears to be a lull right now. I think it has to do with a few converging factors: standards efforts, bad economy, and industry consolidation. Most of the attractive innovation is happening in the standards and open source communities right now. With the bad economy, companies are slow to adopt new technologies. The big boys, like IBM and BEA, simply wait for the standards community to define the base requirements for a new technology, then they build a product to it. This is slower than rushing into the market with something, but the slow corporate adoption is allowing them to do it. Meanwhile, startups blaze the trail with products that end up failing, offering IBM a reference model in the worst case and potentially a head start through low-cost acquisition in the best. Of course, then there is M$FT, which completely ignores the standards - or more accurately adopts the standards and then modifies them slightly so that they become proprietary. 4:31:07 PM