All software is a commodity

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If you have the right people.... I was looking at a small company's recent 10-Q filing and was struck that 1/2 of their total assets were in their proprietary software. Struck mostly because I could download 20 different solutions for free (or little charge) from the internet and completely replace all $40 million dollars of that software in a relatively short period of time (with the right people on the team ;). Listen folks, if you allow yourself to think that your craptastic custom software solution is one of your biggest strategic assets, you've been listening to too many salesmen from companies who's whole goal is to lock you into their proprietary platform. When a "Senior Architect" from a company that sells software comes to tell you that your software is a strategic asset, they are trying to sell you something. The software itself is almost without value, it's the process of developing the software and encoding/enforcing business knowledge that provides the value and differentiation.

Comments

Thomas Eng said…
Damn, I wish I had the chance to read this a year ago, when I was competing against a supplier of a large, monolithic, silverbullit-kind-of software package, and lost out.
January 14, 2012 at 8:31 AM
Anonymous said…
Some specifics, please.
January 14, 2012 at 12:11 PM
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