Death by a thousand papercuts

CIO mag­a­zine is run­ning an inter­est­ing arti­cle show­cas­ing efforts by sev­eral com­pa­nies to use a more mod­u­lar approach when build­ing new EAI appli­ca­tions. Based on what the arti­cle is say­ing, it looks like we are now reach­ing a point where going with a sin­gle ven­dor for your com­plete solu­tion is no longer the prefer­able choice. The rise of web ser­vices as the glue between dif­fer­ent sys­tem could dras­ti­cally reshape how large scale appli­ca­tions are built. his has an impact on any­one who’s cur­rently involved in appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment as it her­alds a new age of modularization.

If the trend holds, we will increas­ingly see extremely spe­cific appli­ca­tion mod­ules being devel­oped instead of one-size-fits-all soft­ware. That, in turn, might erode the profit mar­gins of soft­ware devel­op­ment com­pa­nies as they will be unable to sell fea­tures that the cus­tomer does not want.

As this more dis­trib­uted model evolves and ser­vices become less and less depen­dent on the under­ly­ing oper­at­ing sys­tem, what will hap­pen to com­pa­nies like Microsoft, who tie things very closely with their oper­at­ing system?

It seems to me that the soft­ware world is about the expe­ri­ence the kind of break­ing point the music indus­try has expe­ri­enced with the rise of Nap­ster. Nap­ster was sig­nif­i­cant not only because it allowed to share music but because it unbun­dled songs, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to sell a whole album solely because there was one of two good songs on it. If soft­ware fea­tures become decou­pled due to web ser­vices, we could see soft­ware com­pa­nies being forced to lower the price of their soft­ware pack­ages and sell fea­tures on a new pric­ing model. Large com­pa­nies like Microsoft will not be killed by large com­peti­tors but by the emer­gence of thou­sands of small com­peti­tors who will build bet­ter features.

An inter­est­ing trend that should be followed.