Opening Up to Collaboration - Essay
Case Study: Opening Up to Collaboration
Please read the short article below called “Opening up to Collaboration” and then answer the following question(s):
What are your views on this phenomenon? Is it the strategy of those who cannot compete otherwise? Or is this a powerful new way of forging ahead with collective intelligence? Do you also see this happening in the offline world, in non-IT companies?
Opening Up to Collaboration
By making their software platforms available to all, companies such as Amazon, SAP, and Google are building an engine for growth
by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
As president of SAP's Product & Technology Group, Shai Agassi runs product development for the world's largest applications-software company. Ask him to name the most important development in the software industry of the last decade and he won't say Linux, Web 2.0, services-oriented architectures, or industry consolidation.
He will tell you it's the Amazon.com cloud. Chances are you won't know what he's talking about, let alone how this cloud has deeper implications for software developers in every industry.
Officially called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), it's the equivalent of a 21st century utility. Users pay 10 cents an hour to harness its nearly unlimited computing capacity, allowing anyone to leverage the size and reach of the world's greatest e-commerce engine—from the computer geek testing a new algorithm from her dorm room to a Mumbai-based startup that wants to roll out a new call-center service without spending all its capital on computers.
INFRASTRUCTURES ON TAP
Amazon's cloud is one of many new low-cost collaborative infrastructures—such as free Internet telephony, open-source software, and global outsourcing—that allow individuals and small producers to harness worldclass capabilities, access markets, and serve customers in ways that only large corporations could in the past.
Unlike the previous generations, today's entrepreneurs
Please read the short article below called “Opening up to Collaboration” and then answer the following question(s):
What are your views on this phenomenon? Is it the strategy of those who cannot compete otherwise? Or is this a powerful new way of forging ahead with collective intelligence? Do you also see this happening in the offline world, in non-IT companies?
Opening Up to Collaboration
By making their software platforms available to all, companies such as Amazon, SAP, and Google are building an engine for growth
by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
As president of SAP's Product & Technology Group, Shai Agassi runs product development for the world's largest applications-software company. Ask him to name the most important development in the software industry of the last decade and he won't say Linux, Web 2.0, services-oriented architectures, or industry consolidation.
He will tell you it's the Amazon.com cloud. Chances are you won't know what he's talking about, let alone how this cloud has deeper implications for software developers in every industry.
Officially called Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), it's the equivalent of a 21st century utility. Users pay 10 cents an hour to harness its nearly unlimited computing capacity, allowing anyone to leverage the size and reach of the world's greatest e-commerce engine—from the computer geek testing a new algorithm from her dorm room to a Mumbai-based startup that wants to roll out a new call-center service without spending all its capital on computers.
INFRASTRUCTURES ON TAP
Amazon's cloud is one of many new low-cost collaborative infrastructures—such as free Internet telephony, open-source software, and global outsourcing—that allow individuals and small producers to harness worldclass capabilities, access markets, and serve customers in ways that only large corporations could in the past.
Unlike the previous generations, today's entrepreneurs