Writing in the Wall St Journal about the Microsoft-Sun settlement Robert A. Guth and Don Clark (Behind Secret Settlement Talks: New Power of Tech Customers, April 5) point out the power of customers driving interoperability and standards. It seems that major IT customers have grown weary of trying to get different systems to work together. They want to connect PCs running on Microsoft Windows with Sun servers and run Java applets everywhere. Doesn't seem like too much to ask, does it?
Well, not for large customers. According to the Wall Street Journal writers, these customers have enough clout that they could get the two warring parties together and say something like, "Work together, or else..." It must have worked. This will cost countless law firms buckets of cash, but it will undoubtedly increase IT ROI and productivity.
This is similar to what's been happening in industrial automation for some time. It just hasn't been as dramatic. Large manufacturing firms have been pushing vendors for interoperability for several years. The main problem has been defining interoperability.
Smaller vendors or those locked out of major accounts have naturally advocated totally interchangable components. There were some problems with this approach, not the least being the tremendous amount of legacy equipment. Realizing that total automation component interchangeability was a nirvana reachable only in another life, the market has gravitated to interoperability that is built upon open standards. This allows suppliers other than the specified one to add value to parts of systems or even entire subsystems. The entire industry benefits from this kind of market.
I believe that this is a case where the PC-based control companies lost their battles, but won the war. Use of commercial technologies from the computing world has proliferated leading to greater interoperability. Most of the companies are gone, but the vision lives on. Not only have the [base "]major[per thou] controls vendors adopted commercial technologies, smaller companies as well have been able to introduce control products at less cost providing users with an excellent array of choices to consider when designing new control systems.
This is a good thing.
7:58:10 AM 
|
