Re: And the Magic is still missing
Apotheker - didn't get the IT thing. Its about the innovation ....
I'm not so sure about that. It's important to remember how we got here. It all started with IBM which at the time was a balanced hardware/software company. But by 2010 the hardware side of their business was gone. The hardware innovation was all happening at more narrowly focused companies, and lumbering giants like IBM and HP have trouble with that. You might even say Intel has problems with it these days, except AMD seems to have even more. But you do see innovation and synergies coming out of the software side of things. That's really what virtual machines and the cloud are: software innovations.
Now maybe he wouldn't have recognized a golden egg if the software people had given him one, but he at least foresaw that hardware was headed to commodity status. None of the rest of them did. And hardware being headed for commodity status wasn't exactly an unheard of idea. When the P4s were just coming out, I was at an Intel dog and pony show where one of their VPs posited the idea that in the near future PCs would be free or have negative value. Instead companies would be making their money on their service contracts. Things aren't exactly that bad, but he was more right than wrong.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
