Webby News

It is easy to sympathize with software developers trying to build large, complex enterprise software solutions. At the start, a software development project is like a smooth sheet of ice: full of possibility. It’s a clean slate, free from architectural flaws, bugs, and broken code. But once the first line of code is written, complexities begin to layer one on top of the other. No matter what the end product, many of the same stumbling blocks come up time and again and get in the way of project success. Some classic pitfalls include time restraints, insufficient in-house resources, scope creep, and spiraling development costs. So how do software developers minimize these obstacles and improve their chances for better, faster, more cost-effective software development? In this paper, we present the open source Perl programming language as a solution for avoiding typical software development foibles.

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As far as “Web 2.0 as a software business model” goes, I repeat my initial view from October, 2008 here. There is no longer Web 2.0 as a software business model, and there has never been one. Yes, there has been an attempt to initiate Web 2.0 as a software business model which finally crashed and burned in 2008, four years after the Web 2.0 kool-aid was declared and named by its creators and offered as the sacred solution to the software industry as the path to the software industry heaven. Now the followers of the never existing “Web 2.0 software industry” cult see themselves in a situation similar to many Wall Street companies.

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What is a mashup? Nothing. What are you mashing up with what? If you take Google Earth from under your feet what is left to mash with what and where is the business model to make money? Nowhere. Who will you sell your mashup software to after the election is over and how many companies does CNN need to mash them with Mr. King’s election maps mashup magic show? None.

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Google has disappeared from the Top 20 list of companies trusted with privacy in TRUSTe’s fifth annual survey. American Express came in first followed by eBay (2), IBM (3), HP (6), Apple (8), Intuit (12), Yahoo (14) and Facebook (15).

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After the curtain closes in January, Apple will be pulling out of the annual IDG-own Macworld that’s been a touchstone for the Apple-fancying press and the company’s fans. CEO Steve Jobs is not going to show up this time, leading to speculation about the state of his health. There’s also been speculation he may have nothing to say although there’s been talk about a Mac netbook or that Apple is tired of trying to hit one out of the park every January on IDG’s schedule. Anyway, Jobs has delegated his famous “one more thing” Stevenote to Philip Schiller, Apple’s marketing guy, who’s said to be in line of succession to Stevie in a runoff with COO Tim Cook. Apple claims to have other ways of its own to get in front of customers – developers may be another matter.

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In most discussions about scalability, we often approach the topic as a pure technical/architecture challenge, and ignore cost issues. The problem is that when we truly scale our application, and want to benefit from economies of scale, we’re going to end up with scale limitations, not because of technical issues, but because of the pricing and licensing models.

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Enterprise software is under attack. Traditional infrastructure players like BEA are seeing their core products replaced with free open source projects, while traditional application vendors like Oracle/Siebel are being displaced by SaaS. But is this a slugfest with only one winner? Will SaaS and open source ultimately turn against each other for dominance of the software business model – WWF Smack Down style – where the once united tag team, after conquering their opponent, starts to fight between themselves?

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