Software is eating the world on a UNIX plate
Marc Andreessen is known as the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used Web browser and co-founder of Netscape. He is also investor in Facebook, Groupon, Skype, Twitter, Pinterest, Foursquare and App.net through his VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen explains in a now famous Wall Street Journal interview, why software is eating the world. Today, “all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.” We have:
A high-bandwidth fixed and wireless Internet
Powerful terminals at the edge, i.e. computers, tablets and smartphones.
Cloud computing and along with it, a constant declining cost of hosting web services
The article focuses particularly on Internet companies eating large chunk of traditional businesses: Amazon destroyed Borders, Skype disrupted telecommunications, Netflix eviscerated Blockbuster and iTunes/Pandora/Spotify transformed how we consume music.
There are 2 other interesting trends that I would like to cover:
The rise of SDx: software eating hardware
The iPad eating application-specific device
The rise of SD-x
SD stands for Software Defined. There is a long list of software-defined technologies which previously were hardware-bound.
Software-defined data center: VMware is leading this space with a complete suite of products.
Software Defined Networking: Network technologies have been running on dedicated hardware for a long time but lately, the sector is finally changing quickly. OpenFlow, in particular, is a technology to follow. Google uses OpenFlow for its G-Scale network. The sector is so hot that VM Ware acquired Nicira for $ 1.26B 6 months only after the release of their products. It is not really surprising that Andreesen Horrowitz were investors.
Software Defined Storage: A new architecture for computer storage which will become particularly critical for Software defined data center.
Software Defined Radio - Software is even disrupting Radio (i.e. wireless technology) with a technology allowing protocols to be adapted and updated. SDR is already an old concept but we start seeing some products only now. There is an open source SDR project called GNU Radio.
This is probably an incomplete list and it will grow over time as software keep eating the world.
iPad eating dedicated devices
In the nineties, Microsoft Windows was the platform for personal computing. Today, the iPad is the platform for tablet computing. The fundamental difference is that we are not talking about an operating system but a device with a specific size and a specific set of connectors and sensors. This has a huge disruptive potential as the iPad can replace specific devices in a cost-effective way while providing much more capabilities and flexibility. Some examples of disruptions:
Retail PoS: The iPad has the potential to replace the expensive and static PoS systems that we find in most shops, restaurants and retail stores. Two examples of this revolution is Revel Systems and BreadCrumb. Groupon has acquired BreadCrumb 5 months ago and just relaunched it.
In-flight entertainment: Instead of the old and expensive in-flight entertainement and communication systems in use in most of the XXX, the iPad can deliver a much better user experience - let’s just compare the responsiveness of the iPad screen with the ones that you experience with the touchscreen. I wouldn’t be surprise that this can be provided for a fraction o the price. Quantas has partnered with Panasonic to provide wireless entertainment to equip its Boeing 767s with iPad-powered entertainment.
Ticketing kiosks: Buying or retrieving a ticket on those systems are not always a great user experience. Those systems are usually expensive touch screen computer running an old version of Windows (you can guess when you get the blue screen). They are old, bulky, heavy. Those systems could definitely be replaced by iPad. Just imagine how light, efficient and cool they would become.
ATM machine: Today, most of the ATM machines are running a RTOS, i.e. a real-time operating systems. However, this doesn’t prevent them from crashing. An iPad 2 with front-facing camera could bring new security features like face recognition in a very cost-effective way. I couldn’t find any reference to an actual implementation but IDEO had the same idea and designed an iPad-enabled ATM machine concept.
Those are just a few examples. It is clear to me that many dedicated devices will be killed by the combination iPad + dedicated apps.
On a UNIX plate?
It is quite ironic that UNIX, a technology created in the 70s (actually UNIX was originally developed in 1969) has given birth to many of the operating systems that everybody uses today without even knowing or noticing.
Android is based on a Linux kernel, the most famous open-source UNIX descendant
Most of the web services today are running on Linux
The Bell Labs should be proud.
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