Kingdom Keys Bookmarking Blog

As information technology becomes a very mature industry we see a pattern of diversification not unlike what is found in the medical profession.

Just like you have cardiologists, chiropractors, dentists, gynaecologists, podiatrists and nurses we now have system administrators, PHP programmers, security advisors, web designers, solution implementers, data warehouse architects, user interface artists and help desk assistants.

But where are the general practitioners?

The ability to navigate through the maze of options and the deliberate choices that you make to keep yourself on target can make or break your project.

Many have bowed the knee to swear allegiance to all mighty Micro$oft. Others have chosen to be hip and different and gladly pay a premium to do so with Apple. Still others have been proselytising the benefits of open-source and the strategic benefits of tinkering under the hood with Linux.

One thing is certain - people do not swap camps easily. There is a captive market for each IT denomination and their followers believe each platform can do all things to all people. It wasn't so in the beginning. Apple made its mark with the advent of desktop publishing and the release of laser printers and postscript fonts. But Apple do not want to run flash in their web browser. Linux runs more than half of the web servers thanks to Apache. Attempts to sell Linux powered desktop machines or laptops were cleverly thwarted by Micro$oft who threatened to embargo hardware vendors who broke ranks.

If you live in Eastern Europe and devise viruses and security exploits then Micro$oft is your platform of choice. Then you can sell subscriptions for sentry software to combat this ever increasing threat.

Once you've settled on a certain camp you have to realise you can't do everything yourself. The operating system is what it is and you'd better know how to backup and restore your hard disk. But maybe you don't worry about that and have moved to cloud computing instead. There the FBI and whoever else can read all your files divulging your trade secrets long before you launch to the market.

Y2K was supposed to be the apocalyptic downfall of everything computing but 1st Jan 2000 passed just like any other day. Thanks for the hard work of all those who figured out we'd better have more than two digits to store the calendar year.

So if you are a generalist and just want things done with a minimum of fuss without too much concern about the fine details you eventually have to trust someone else to deliver their part. The saving grace is that most projects have a life span of just about two years - and after that - who cares! Nobody can predict what the landscape will be like in two years from now. The same large players will try to bully each other out. Thankfully some smart operators will carve themselves a market niche and nurture a faithful following - there again - specialising in a certain market segment.

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