March 16, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item SQL Server Knockoffs?
March 16, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I think it's inevitable that software will be a commodity. On the other hand, chairs are a commodity, but Laz-y-Boy is still in business. That makes it hard to tell what the future will be on these things.
Wheels have been around since before civilization, but there are engineers who spend all their careers doing nothing but improving wheels. Again, I'm not sure the same applies to basic software, but it sure does seem to have some bearing on the subject.
There's even a market for new, improved versions of fire. After all, that's pretty much what making internal combustion engines more efficient is all about. Will there be a few million software engineers when software is as much of a commodity as fire? No. Will there be some very specialized, highly profitable companies that work at the far edge of what can be done with it? Probably.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
March 17, 2009 at 5:20 am
I don't see software as a commodity happening during my life / career. It very well may happen, but I think I'll be dead and buried for a long time beforehand.
Or perhaps the application of fire/ software will grow along the lines of basic fire, fire applied to product, and then fire as a product. I'm thinking of the evolution of fire from "Keep me warm, cook my food" to the application of Napalm... Perhaps we'll get to the point where my foes can be done in by software.
Crazy little "Web bots" running around the Net, duking it out with some foreign nemesis, then we'll need a large government body to control, regulate, and secure these creations. Perhaps something like a National Software Agency... We'll all be happy the NSA is there to protect us....
:w00t: maybe there's something in those pills I'm taking.....
Honor Super Omnia-
Jason Miller
March 17, 2009 at 5:32 am
No offence but thank the good lord not everyone thinks like that or we would have stopped development with DOS on a ZX spectrum and we would travel to work by horse or bicycle. After all even those who are happy with SQL 2000 could probably have settled for MSDE but when you compare DTS and SSIS or SSAS 2000 vs SSAS 2005 you cannot honestly say that all the new stuff is just add-ons to make you buy the product.
Things may plateau on features or technology for a while but sooner or later someone will come along and reinvent the wheel and we will be off and running again and that even applies to Outlook or Word.
The world cannot stand still and we need people to believe we have not "done it all".
March 17, 2009 at 7:24 am
Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older
When did they?
Sunrise, Sunset - Sunrise, Sunset...
(From "Fidler on the Roof")
Yes, everything gets to be a commodity sooner or later.
The question is, when do we become commodities?
When do those happy little machines that needed us to program them and support them become complex enough that they don't need us anymore?
Fortunately, I think I'll be in retirement when that happens.
My apologies to any who will have trouble getting that tune out of their head for the rest of the day...
___________________________________________________
“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”
March 17, 2009 at 7:46 am
Jason Miller (3/17/2009)
I don't see software as a commodity happening during my life / career. It very well may happen, but I think I'll be dead and buried for a long time beforehand.
I imagine the inventor of fire felt the same way. But that only took, what, about 2-million years to be where it is today? 🙂
Or perhaps the application of fire/ software will grow along the lines of basic fire, fire applied to product, and then fire as a product. I'm thinking of the evolution of fire from "Keep me warm, cook my food" to the application of Napalm... Perhaps we'll get to the point where my foes can be done in by software.
Crazy little "Web bots" running around the Net, duking it out with some foreign nemesis, then we'll need a large government body to control, regulate, and secure these creations. Perhaps something like a National Software Agency... We'll all be happy the NSA is there to protect us....
There are already national centers in most modern countries dedicated to both attacking enemy networks and defending their own. And how far a stretch is it from Predator drones to lethal software? After all, the drones are run by software, with human guidance. (Skynet, anyone?)
:w00t: maybe there's something in those pills I'm taking.....
Nah. They're just placebos. You're probably just weirder than you want to admit. 🙂
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
March 17, 2009 at 8:46 am
GSquared (3/17/2009)
Nah. They're just placebos. You're probably just weirder than you want to admit. 🙂
And here I thought they were just being slipped into his food without him noticing 🙂
March 17, 2009 at 8:47 am
Amen . . .there's progress galore in versions 2005 and 2008 and that progress cost hundreds of thousands of person hours to develop and test.
March 17, 2009 at 9:01 am
darryl.hasieber (3/17/2009)
No offence but thank the good lord not everyone thinks like that or we would have stopped development with DOS on a ZX spectrum and we would travel to work by horse or bicycle. After all even those who are happy with SQL 2000 could probably have settled for MSDE but when you compare DTS and SSIS or SSAS 2000 vs SSAS 2005 you cannot honestly say that all the new stuff is just add-ons to make you buy the product.Things may plateau on features or technology for a while but sooner or later someone will come along and reinvent the wheel and we will be off and running again and that even applies to Outlook or Word.
The world cannot stand still and we need people to believe we have not "done it all".
I think you're missing the point. It's not that everything is done, it's not that we don't need innovation. It's that not every instance, or every situation cries out for the latest and greatest.
If I start a delivery business, I have the choice of using a new truck, or an older one with less capabilities. If I start a bar, I can get brand new guns that properly dispense mixed drinks in measured amounts, or I can get older knockoffs that run according to the user's desire.
I don't need 80% of Word's features. It's a commodity, and for most writing, it's overkill. A knockoff like ThinkOffice might work fine for most of my work.
Many of my SQL Server instances never run DTS or SSIS. They don't need anything more than SS2K provides. If someone has a knockoff, is that worth using in those cases? If they're providing support?
There are definitely places where SS2K8, and SQL 11, will make more sense. Where they'll be better choices, and they're worth taking advantage of (and paying for) to build a better application.
March 17, 2009 at 9:19 am
The Express version is designed by Microsoft to fill this hole, where a solid RDBMS engine is required but not all the extra features. I guess encouraging the use of Express also provides a certain amount of vendor-lock-in too.
I completely agree with you that, especially in the non-corporate market, MSSQL 2000 fulfills all reasonable needs. But it is the lucrative enterprise market that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM et al are trying to conquer. And in this market, there seems to be no end in sight to the new products that they can think up. Just look at the current list of Microsoft Server products - it is huge!
Andy
March 17, 2009 at 10:16 am
While everyone & every entity is cost conscious, the Enterprise level users place far greater value on consistency. To a corporation running SQL Server Farms with terabyte sixed data are more concerned with ensuring a consistent product that will work in the way they are used to or better then in saving even as much as %50 at the cost of getting even as much as %80 of the same feature set.
Microsoft may become less dominant in the nonbusiness to small business user market, so long as they continue to provide consistency in products & support, they'll have these Enterprise clients even if the sales go from every 4-6 years to every 6- 8 years or longer.
For companies on the Enterprise scale it's far more cost effective to stick with what you got even if it has bugs (so long as the bugs are known and some kind of work-a-round exists) then to switch over to another product. I use to work at a software company that was the leader in a vertical market and while the bigger clients may even complain the loudest and report the most number of problems, the mere idea of switching to another product often breaks the calculator.
This is why these companies invest so heavily in pre-purchase review & testing of various software products available to their industry. Its also why the sales folks at these companies do everything including selling their soul to get the deal; they know that once the product is rolled out and the clients people are trained it would take an act of God to get management to spend the outrageous amounts it would take to change over to another software app.
If Microsoft is smart they'll separate into 2 groups; the Enterprise Focused and everyone else and let the Enterprise Focused part of the company focus on making software geared specifically to those users instead of trying to make a product that works at all levels for all users. There's just to much competition, especially from free products, for a company like Microsoft to keep a hold of multiple market segments.
I for one hope that WIndows 7 does well but regardless of how it works out I'd like for the SQL Server group to move away from trying to accomidate every type of user to focusing on the non-small business sized customer base.
Kindest Regards,
Just say No to Facebook!March 17, 2009 at 10:20 am
BTW ... I must be the only person on the planet, aside from the actors in the Vista commercials, who has had no problems with Vista and likes it so much that I would pick it over XP any day.
I am a heavy user working in development so it's not like a use Vosta to do word documents and or spreadsheets. Typically I have the worst of luck with stuff but for some odd reason, in the case of Vista I seem to be the only person on the planet, perhaps the galaxy, outside of Redmond who likes Vista.
Go figure.
Kindest Regards,
Just say No to Facebook!March 17, 2009 at 10:34 am
I agree absolutely that we should not be forced to buy new versions of products because they have a feature we don't need, and I am not just talking about software. Cars seem to be coming out with driver aids galore that I never asked for and don't want to pay for but I have no choice... but that's another topic and don't get me started.
Bottom line is I do agree with you but I don't know what innovation is coming, even the innovators don't know that one... not yet anyway! Take the wheel a small change like a rubber tyre on the outside was a revolution in it's day then they made it hollow and filled it with an air inflated tube, then came the tubeless tyre we use today and there are designs and ideas on the horizon that will revolutionise the wheel on the horizon. We cannot say what revolution will come so I don't think software will ever become static. The automobile and wheel haven't and they have been around a lot longer than software.
There is a machine called marketing which steam rollers all of us into products we never asked for with features we don't want as the consumer we don't really have the ability to say "that's good enough for me". The automobile is proof of that and I think software is the same as any other product. I wish I could stay with the version that does what I need until the revolutionary version comes along but I know that's not going to happen.
March 17, 2009 at 11:20 am
The sad fact is that Microsoft makes everything an application. SQL Server should be a server not a programming language and Vista should be an operating system not a toy for stitching your pictures. Microsoft will suffer unless they stop treating real work like games.
Gary
March 17, 2009 at 11:23 am
YSLGuru (3/17/2009)
BTW ... I must be the only person on the planet, aside from the actors in the Vista commercials, who has had no problems with Vista and likes it so much that I would pick it over XP any day.I am a heavy user working in development so it's not like a use Vosta to do word documents and or spreadsheets. Typically I have the worst of luck with stuff but for some odd reason, in the case of Vista I seem to be the only person on the planet, perhaps the galaxy, outside of Redmond who likes Vista.
Go figure.
There are at least two of us.
I prefer Vista for a number of reasons. I've gone over them before on these forums.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
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