Now, customers are looking for simplicity, integration and security across releases. They want standards-based software that doesn't require the labour expenditure of the past. Software chief executives have two choices: they can try to impose their proprietary methods on the market or they can adopt a new service-based approach to providing and maintaining software.
If we're in a period of renovation rather than innovation, how does that impact companies and their customers?
For the big, established players, the cycles of innovation will slow down, yet the companies using the software will want to do more. They want to respond to spot markets -- to grow and shrink very fast. They want more flexibility. They want to make what they have work. There's already a certain amount of infrastructure in every company, typically a mix of Unix, Windows and Solaris.
If my business challenge at Motorola is to get more visibility into my supply chain -- if there's too much inventory in one place or not enough in another -- I need technology that analyses the data generated by my supply chain infrastructure, whether it's Oracle or i2 Technologies. If I can integrate all the data from those disparate sources, I would have a much better way to manage inventory visibility.
In the past, when customers have asked for improvements, we've said, "Replace your old system with this new system." That's not true anymore. You've got to use the existing infrastructure and take advantage of information already there. During the last 10 years, we did modernise the infrastructure. Now, I can actually do the renovation. I don't have to knock it down.
What happens to Silicon Valley in a period of renovation? The Valley has made its mark with innovation.
Silicon Valley could struggle with this. We've got to figure out what would be our advantage. Our mantra has been to take a brand-new idea and put it together with really creative engineers funded by venture capitalists. There's still going to be invention, but not at the rate it happened in the 90s.
When you start funding invention today, you better make sure that the invention is good enough that everybody is going to beat a path to your door. I would never say Silicon Valley is dead. We'll just have to learn to do things differently than in the past. We can't just keep funding tons and tons of inventions.
