Computers: Just another commodity?
Published: 03 Oct 2003 10:54 BST
From where he sits, John Sculley enjoys a panoramic view of the IT landscape.
As an investment partner with venture firm Sculley Brothers, Sculley does not count himself among those subscribing to the school of thought that IT is headed for a dead end. Rather, he sees a technology business on the brink of change. Known as an idea guy during his tenure as CEO of Apple, Sculley has a short list of promising new technologies that he believes are already transforming the IT industry in subtle -- and not so subtle -- ways.
Sculley spoke with CNET News.com before his planned trip to California to participate in the Silicon Valley 4.0 conference.
Q: As the IT industry restructures, how would you describe its turnaround?
A: I think we're going through more than just a cyclical change. We're going through a systemic, secular change in high technology. We saw, in the 1990s, the commoditisation of hardware. Now, we're going to be seeing the commoditisation of almost everything, including software and services. This makes a lot of sense because, as the technology world moves from being computer-intensive to communications-intensive, you have to have open standards, which means innovation is going to have to take place in different parts of the value chain.
The things that we used to think of as the areas for "wow" technology, like computers, have become commoditised and even transparent, as they are embedded into systems. The innovation now is taking place with things that are largely being driven by market opportunities and customers.
Do you think the IT industry is as relevant now as when you were CEO of Apple Computer?
I think, today, we take for granted the things that amazed us 15 or 20 years ago. Back in the 1980s, every few months, someone would be able to show someone something that no one had ever seen before. It might be a colour display, it might be laser printing, it might be desktop publishing, or it might be video running on a personal computer display. Today, we're not particularly amazed by these kinds of demonstrations anymore, because the technology has come so far, and people's acceptance of the world becoming digitised has become so well understood.
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