Technology marches on

[yesthattom]

10 years ago I built a music player out of a PC and other stuff that was 4U big, cost thousands (if I used new parts) and could hold as many songs as my cigarette-pack sized iPod can store today. Thanks to Moore’s Law, just about any thing you build today can be done on something the size of an iPod, you just have to wait long enough. What year will an entire SAP deployment be the size of an iPod? What year will a service like gmail be the size of an iPod? What year will a PeopleSoft installation be the size of an iPod? An entire Remedy helpdesk ticket system iPod?

Now in that year... will someone want to pay $millions for an equivalent PeopleSoft installation when it is on an iPod? I doubt it. Would PeopleSoft be able to stay in business selling an iPod-priced device? I doubt it. So will this kind of innovation come from an outside competitor? I’d assume so... just like phone companies couldn’t make the leap to VoIP and were instead put out of business by the likes of Cisco.

I wonder if prior to complete (for example) PeopleSoft iPods, there will be a generation of single-function bricks that are connected via standard interfaces. You buy a database brick, a core IT services (DNS, authentication, ActiveDir/LDAP) brick, and a PeopleSoft app brick; and they provide the service together. Sort of like legos.

What app will be on your brick?

Comments

last year...

[chrisla.livejournal.com]

We redid our SAP install last year moving from SUN to Linux. I choose to go 100% virtual under vmware, prod and all. I bet it would all mostly fit on a 1TB disk, so in a way my SAP install is already shrunk down to something cigar box sized.

[etler.livejournal.com]

You assume you'll be running the same PeopleSoft software whenever that happens. I think it's been demonstrated pretty well that software requirements tend to scale with hardware. Sure, maybe you'll be able to run PeopleSoft 2008 on your brick, but can you run PeopleSoft 2015? I think Oracle (and most of the other large software providers) will work very dilligently towards making sure you can't do this.

[agent_dani]

That's what I was thinking. Sure, the database stuff I ran a decade ago could run on my Nokia N800, but what I ran then doesn't resemble what I'm running now.

[subwayfaire.livejournal.com]

>Would PeopleSoft be able to stay in business selling an iPod-priced device?

That would sure be a surprise to Larry Ellison, who spent a a whole bunch of his allowance money on psft in, what, 2005? Peoplesoft's more of flavor of Oracle now. And I doubt you'll see an oPod any time soon.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

An entire Remedy helpdesk ticket system iPod?

If you don't already have an eee, $400 and a Remedy license will get you this. RequestTracker will still be better, though. ...and easier to build on an eee.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

My brick will include RT instead of Remedy. hopefully at that point peoplesoft and SAP will die. ;)

What do you mean by "a service like gmail"? do you mean storing all my mail, or do you mean the actual service? 'cause last I checked, Google wasn't handing out the binaries nor source code to Gmail.

And yes, people will pay good money for PeopleSoft and Remedy and SAP and even Oracle even when/though it fits on a iPod. Because the more you pay, the better it is...didn't you know? ;)

[dawgboi.livejournal.com]

They will always make it hard to snap them together, since when have the major players agreed on a standard interface? So I'll always have a job integrating enterprise level software. Or so I hope.

[edhorch.livejournal.com]

Doubtful on the single-function bricks. Remember the "software components" Next Big Thing of the late 80's?

That said, my brick would have power. Like enough to run my house for a month. Have two, offset by two weeks, and every two weeks take one down to the gas station (retrofitted for distribution), drop it off and pick up a full one. The empties would then be taken out into the ocean on a barge, and recharged using wind, solar power and harnessed tidal forces.

I'd write more but I have to go back to my tree-sit now.