No more empires

Apple wants to be a rebel. To do so, they need an empire to rebel against. For the past two decades, Microsoft was their empire. Prior to Microsoft's rise, the empire was IBM.

IBM had a long and storied empire. It was the first to have an empire in IT, and perhaps the only company to do so. (More on that later.)

IBM had a comprehensive empire, starting with mainframes. They sold everything you needed for computers. They sold the processors, the card readers and card punches, tape drives, disk drives, and even the cables to connect them. They sold operating systems, utilities, compilers, and job scheduling programs.

Empires must be all-encompassing. They must sell everything one needs. If they don't they are not truly empires.

When DEC introduced its line of mini-computers, IBM competed with them, by selling its own minicomputers. (And operating systems, terminals, and printers for the minicomputers.)

When microcomputers became popular, IBM introduced the PC. To offer a solution quickly, IBM used other manufacturers for several components: Epson for printers and Microsoft for the operating system.

IBM maintained its empire until Microsoft took control with Windows. The breakup was ugly and has been documented by others, so I won't go into those details. But build an empire, Microsoft did.

Microsoft's empire was different from IBM's. IBM's empire was all-encompassing, from hardware to software to supplies. Microsoft's empire was limited to software. It sold no processors, disk drives, or other peripherals. (I'm ignoring the Xbox and the Surface tablet and the Microsoft keyboard and Microsoft mouse, which are not insignificant but not really to the point.)

Microsoft did keep the "we supply everything" mindset for its software empire. It provided the operating system, office programs (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, etc.), developer tools (Visual Studio with compilers for various languages, SourceSafe and TFS), databases, accounting software, ... you name it, Microsoft offered it.  They even created a file packager like PKZIP but with proprietary technology (a thing called "OLE Structured Storage", which let one contain multiple files in a single file, but without compression).

Today Microsoft does not dominate in every aspect of IT. It dominates in some areas (desktop operating systems, office software), competes in others (cloud services, tablets), and fails in others (phones). One could build a modern cloud/mobile app with only Microsoft technology, but without iPhone and Android support, it would have very limited acceptance. But one cannot build a mobile/cloud app with only Apple technologies (they don't offer cloud services). One could use Google's technology; they offer phones and tablets, cloud services, and development tools, but you would still lose the iPhone market. No one vendor has all of the solutions.

Will we see another empire in the IT world? Microsoft took the empire role from IBM, will someone take the role from Microsoft?

A new empire would be difficult to arrange. It would have to become the dominant supplier of IT hardware and software. Even if it followed Microsoft's lead and provided only software, it would have a large task. Software ranges from operating systems to office programs to development tools to business software to databases to analytics to games to video editing to ... you get the idea. And don't forget that a lot of software is available via open source.

I think we will see no new empire rise. I think we will see no one company offer everything one needs, and be dominant in all of those areas. The breadth of technology is too wide.

With no single, dominant provider, we will see instead a market with multiple providers. And that makes things less convenient for some.

An empire offers simplicity and comfort. In the era of the IBM empire, one could select IBM as the vendor, knowing that it was a safe choice. The saying was "no one was fired for buying IBM equipment"; IBM made the best, and if IBM equipment didn't solve the problem, no one else's would either. (At least that was the belief.) When Microsoft built its empire on Windows, they became the safe choice.

With the rise of mobile and cloud technologies, there is no one provider for all technologies. One has to select from multiple vendors and get their technologies to work together. One can never be sure that one has the best tool for the task. Is Microsoft Azure the best cloud solution for you. (More to the point, is it acceptable?) How to develop apps for iOS and Android, and should you include Microsoft Mobile? Do you develop a desktop version of your app? What tools do you use to build it?

The good news is that there are several "right" answers to these questions. Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud are capable platforms. There are multiple tools to develop for iOS, Android, and Windows. You don't have to find the one and only one tool that will work for you.

The bad news is that you have to think more about your objectives, the tools you want to use, and the techniques you will use. It is the thinking part that will frighten people who are used to picking the safe choice.