France Eyes la vie en Open source :: Open Source Directory :: OSDir.com :: Open Source Software, Reviews & News : Civil service minister Renaud Dutreil told Reuters France wanted to use 'open-source' software providers to resupply some of its almost one million state computers, under a government cost-cutting drive designed to trim a bulging public deficit. 'We are not starting a war against Microsoft or against American companies in the software sector,' Dutreil said in an interview. But he added that Microsoft 'must return to being one supplier to the state among others."
I see a pattern here and check this out in Brazil. It seems there are now alternatives and the certainty of open standards is beginning to have a dramatic effect, the interest now for me will be how Microsoft is going to manage this shift, some great code and tools are appearing in the .NET space - programming with the framework is very productive but that alone will not be enough - the last battleground for Microsoft may well be mission-critical applications but the strategy of claiming to have the best car to drive might not cut it when we'd rather drive a Peugeot instead of a Ferrari.
Grid computing is gaining momentum while still being a whisper there are some interesting projects in the Academic space such as a CMS portal running on the grid. If companies depart entirely from rich desktops and live the client-server dream of grid they may find they've got enough to get the job done (architecture tools, desktop and server ecosystem) and with a power that is easy to scale up and keep going it might be another perspective to take, especially as the cost of designing, building, deploying and even implementing continue to reduce as supply in this market continues to exceed demand.
This does imply that we might not need such homogenous IT environments between businesses being as common as now i.e. windows on the desktop. A great dictionary reference states: In the context of distributed systems, middleware makes heterogeneous systems appear as a homogeneous entity. For example see: interoperable network. Subtle clue there ;-)
So, if we're now at the stage where software is so capable that it is making those who work in the industry able to assemble solutions that are more than acceptable, do what they say on the tin then and transform the business this means that once all our businesses have gone digital and innovation continues from this, what will Microsoft do to compete, how will IBM justify its services pricing when the knowledge is free and across the internet - it appears while both might be working hard to figure this out the market will decide their fate and so they must move even closer to working out what we as consumers value and need and they should then charge for that.
It seems that knowledge is always power so I anticipate innovative AI and search technology (data mining) being rather important catalysts for all the dependent technologies used for commercial strategy. Maybe it will be the company that can equip and transform a business quickest that will be most admonished for their approach.
Transparency will get greater and competition will hot up but the business that has a love affair with their technology choices will be a loyal customer.
It's strange how you find out about cool stuff, as I've posted before I never expect to find out about something before anyone else so to the uber .NET dudes please excuse me for mentioning this.
After a tip-off by Paul Thomalla regarding a sweet tool for searching .pst and file data client-side my New Zealand devhead, Mike Upshon, clued me up even further - that LookOut uses Lucene which, like so many lovely things these days, is an open source search engine and a port from the Java community. It seems many cool things in the Java community are making their way across to C# and I'm all for that!
I'm glad to see good evidence of collaborative intelligence flowing very quickly around the world and good ideas seem to rocket ever faster once the concept has been proven.
Here's a mention of Lucene from another blog I found discussing this but for now Lucene is sitting quietly out there waiting to become a must-have component for groupware and collaboration tools.