Captains of Industry

Captains of Industry
Captains of Industry

Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Brave New World of Software Applications -- The Office of the Future

I'm writing this to describe the birth of a new era in software -- -- you no doubt are aware of many of these things but I thought it wise to write anyway. The new era of browser apps is now taking off. The prelude was Apple's iPhone apps and Google Android phone apps that both grew rapidly and offer innovative inexpensively priced software -- -- the apps are extremely easy to order and use.

The prelude is now transitioning to the main act -- -- these apps are no longer restricted to phones, but now work on PCs and Apple MACs. Just like the phone apps there are two classes, Google's marketplace apps ( http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home )and Apple's MAC apps. Each is off to a robust but modest beginning, Apple has around 1000 apps available on its first day of business, Google has around 50. This is only the takeoff point, the number of iPhone apps is a couple of hundred thousand and I expect the number of Mac apps to approach the same number. Correspondingly Android apps number in the tens of thousands and likewise I expect the Google app marketplace to soon number in the tens of thousands.

I believe this is a watershed event for software. A new way to deliver, a new pricing bracket, new innovations, the mixture of both games and industrial-strength software.

One of the strengths of Google marketplace apps is that it's cloud centric; the new third-party apps can integrate and use the well-established classical Google apps -- -- spreadsheets, documents, music files, calendars, pictures.

Another facet of this change is that, for better or worse, Google and Apple will now fully invade the corporate business software environment. Their consumer driven rate of innovation is orders of magnitude faster than present software companies. Hold onto your hat, this stuff is coming fast and furious and the landscape will change faster than we can imagine.

Tien and I will be presenting this new paradigm in our next March 9 meeting.

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