C
Hi all I have seen a trend lately with Jim and Walt and others to discuss some "High Level" issues that the industry as a whole faces. In bits and pieces across discussions that sometimes go far abroad there are some recurring themes that are truly important. Lest they disappear in the noise, I thought I'd restate them succinctly. One of my functions is futurist and I am most interested in these trends and how they relate to what I am attempting to do. As I think it through the collective wisdom appears sound, we differ mostly in what to do about it. Since these are the very problems I seek to solve, I thought this should provide constructive discussion. Trend: The industry as a whole is flat or possibly even shrinking. Offered Causes: Market Saturation, we have done about all we can do with the present paradigm. Everything that can be profitably automated has been automated and further growth will require that we move to higher level integration. My take: True, to some extent. There are still vast opportunities at the low end, the "easy stuff". The trick here is in the "profitably" part and overcoming inertia. My contention is that with the costs involved, we have only been able to address the most compelling needs for automation. I have seen in many instances, companies start down the road and after a project or two are sufficiently bloodied to lose enthusiasm. There are also expectations that we can do things that seem simple and perfectly logical but with the present tools and methods are neither. The higher end opportunities are there but the prevailing attitudes towards closed systems and proprietary solutions is a very weak and in fact, paradoxical position to address these from. Bottom line summation: If I am a company that has invested in some automation seen the elephant so to speak and now seeks to take the next step and tie these islands of automation together and to my enterprise system., my prospects are bleak or worse. If I wanted to make sure that none of my diverse systems would work together or interoperate, I'd call the Automation vendors, they are expert at preventing systems integration. Unless all your automation is from a single vendor and all your IS systems run Microsoft, there isn't much hope. On the low end, the cost of providing solutions is the barrier. How to fix it: Integration and interoperability have to be design goals going forward. This will require acceptance of common standards. protocols, and Open Systems. If there were one universal communications method, the difficulty of integrating systems would decrease by several orders of magnitude. If it were truly open, the drivers would get written on the IS side even for legacy systems and oddballs. The only way that this can realistically be accomplished is if those means are absolutely independent and publicly owned. period. If it even appears that any one vendor or group of vendors can control it in any way, Game Over. If it's owned by a consortium. Game Over. We have already tried those two approaches many times with each one being a complete and utter failure. Public ownership is the only possible way to get full participation in this climate. This industry is also hobbled by the enormous cost of duplication. Not only are there 50 complete lines of incompatible products that accomplish the same tasks, there are at least 25 incompatible busses to do it on. This is not the way to grow an industry. This is not the way to lower costs. 98% of that R&D money was wasted in terms of providing solutions especially at the low end. If the PC industry were still working this way, it would be in the same shape. The ubiquitous, efficient, cheap, networking that makes this message possible is the direct result of standardization around the Internet Protocols. These, it can be argued, are not publicly owned. but they started out that way and at this point they cannot be manipulated to the advantage of any one commercial entity so the effect is the same. Growing sideways is obviously not working at providing explosive growth in this industry. To move forwards requires the same sort of changes that take place in any volume based industry. None of the 50 product lines is going to achieve the volume to lower costs and improve efficiency in delivery of services. Suppose all the cost and effort to maintain all these parallel solutions were concentrated on a few. How much more progress could be made? How much more efficient would support be?, programming? Suppose hardware was compatible. How much less would it cost? Suppose that every one used the same languages and algorithms and common modules were shared. How much less of a project would be programming and how many fewer bugs and problems would there be. How can this be accomplished in this hyper competitive industry? Perhaps it can't. Some days, I begin to think that way. But, if it can, it will be by providing a strictly independent, publicly owned alternative that can be readily expanded, changed, and adapted at will to cover the maximum number of situations. In this way it can achieve volumes where code reuse and commonality attack the problems facing the industry. I'm curious how some of you others see the situation and what exactly you are doing to fix it. Regards cww