Forrester declares Web “dead” again
Posted on May 8, 2006
Filed Under Enterprise Software, Innovation |
The folks at Forrester have been on that X Internet theme for the better part of 4 years. We could argue back and forth about the merits of the concept, but it’s pretty clear that the way they envisioned the executable internet then is not how it has actually come about. Their original thesis was completely void of any notion of software services instead suggesting that the executable internet would consist of applications and data packaged together as components which were then to be delivered to the desktop… which I guess Colony would argue is the essence of services. Maybe that case could be made but what is still missing in the notion of zero footprint services being combined with other services to deliver more complex applications, aka mashups (a term I am increasingly growing a dislike of).
One thing that made me laugh is the quote from Colony that “the web is dead technology…” as this is exactly the same quote that Colony threw out in 2001 and of course the web is hardly dead, in fact it continues to grow in utility and function. Eventually it will be dead I suppose, replaced by something better, in which case Colony will prove that even a broken clock is accurate twice a day.
I actually agree with much of what Forrester is pitching these days (and in fact, Forrester is the one analyst firm that I signed up for “premium” services with… Charlene alone is worth it). I did take exception with the breath of the statement I quoted below that “much business software will be free and funded by advertising” because we have looked extensively at this notion and find is much more difficult to pull off than the quote would suggest. First of all, no business software is free because you end up paying for it with non-financial resources as well as in actual licensing fees. That semantic point aside, there are significant issues outstanding with regard to security, regulatory issues, functional process and data integration, and the specifics of advertising economics that have yet to be addressed in a business software context.
I am a advocate of advertising supported business applications, but am the first to acknowledge that they won’t work broadly and where they do work they rely heavily on sponsorship instead of clickthroughs. Simply put, a great many business applications simply don’t have the CPM support to be meaningful. Click fraud is also a growing problem on the consumer side and will be on the enterprise side as well, the major ad networks need to get this under control before enterprise business applications clients will invest in the services.
Australian IT – Oracle ‘to miss net revolution’ (Kelly Mills, MAY 09, 2006):
In the future, much business software will be free and funded by advertising, he says. Businesses will leap to this concept to overcome legacy problems. Tied in with this model is the fruition of service-oriented architecture and companies being able to embed themselves in a customer’s operation.
Technorati Tags: advertising, enterprise software, microsoft, Oracle, SAP, web2
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About
My name is Jeff Nolan and I write Venture Chronicles. I am the VP of Product Marketing for Get Satisfaction and I write about a range of topics that interest me, including public policy, technology, entrepreneurship, finance, and global issues.
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