Dated Sept. 18th, 2006.
The New Barbarians
,----[ Quote ]
| Coleman is one of dozens of new barbarians plotting the Cheap Revolution,
| the wholesale shift by corporate customers and techmakers to cheap chips
| and open-source (often free) software such as Linux. They are embracing
| simplicity, unlocking prodigious new power and cutting tech costs by up
| to 90%, threatening the Silicon Valley plutocracy: the proprietary gear,
| "closed" software, redundant backup systems and fat profit margins of
| incumbents like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, EMC and other
| blue-chip nameplates.
|
| [...]
|
| Engineers are fleeing BEA, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun to push the Cheap
| Revolution at no-name shops in obscure office parks in San Jose,
| San Mateo and Redwood City. David R. Dargo Jr., a programming hotshot
| at Oracle, retired in his 40s and was playing golf all day long when he
| was lured back to the Valley. He leads fellow Oracle alumni at Ingres,
| a database maker that aims to undercut Oracle with lower prices and
| better service. Paul Maritz, who ran development at Microsoft before
| quitting in 2000, has assembled a team that includes some former
| Microsoft engineers at his new firm, PI Corp., to outdo Windows.
|
| [...]
|
| Now newcomers are pushing lethal Linux into new markets: Motorola
| cell phones, Sony TVs and TiVo digital recorders; networking routers
| (Cisco and Nortel face new low-cost rivals; and data storage (EMC and
| Network Appliance are in the crosshairs). Every big software
| maker--including Microsoft, BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP, SAS Institute, Veritas
| and VMware--now faces rivals pushing open-source or Web-based
| alternatives. The sellers of these cut-rate packages willingly accept
| profit margins of less than 10%, one-third that of tech's Old Guard.
|
| "All these guys that sell proprietary hardware with proprietary
| operating systems and massive margins, they're all dead," declares Simon
| Lok, founder of Lok Technology in San Jose...
|
| [...]
|
| Coleman, however, points out that so far every new wave of computing has
| been dominated by newcomers, not by leaders of the previous generation.
| To survive, he says, companies must undergo a transplant of corporate
| DNA, and few survive the surgery. "Startups," he says, "always define
| the new era."
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http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0918/102_print.html
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