The management master Clayton Christensen provides a seemingly impossible answer to the challenge of open source software, providing a seemingly impossible answer: Linux application software for investing in the palm.
Christensen is Associate Professor Harvard Business School, with a "innovator 's dillema" in 1997, which is described in the book to fail to accept "disruptive" technology.
Christensen said on Thursday (14th) in the speech of the Future Forward Technology Conference, the open source is a significant subversion for Microsoft and the entire software industry. He said: "Linux is rooted in new application products, such as web servers and palm. With these things, the application function of desktop computers will be smoked by the Internet, which will result in Microsoft's destruction."
Christensen said that Microsoft can subversion of this market by establishing an individual cause of "eliminating Microsoft". He said that if Microsoft does not take a reaction in the desktop type with the palm of the palm, it will miss a new wave of application and market opportunities. Microsoft has admitted that open source software has a major threat to its career. The company has not responded to Christensen's recommendations.
Christensen also observed that when the company began to follow the planned and listening to customers' voice and other, it would usually fail. He said that it is necessary to succeed, and the operator does not just cater to customers and continuous improvement of existing products, and must establish different units to utilize new technologies. Regardless of whether the things are low or poor profits. For example, Digital Equipment, this company has grown rapidly in the 1980s, and low-cost mini computers. However, after other types of PCs begin to popularize, this company is from two economic reasons: PC's gross profit is too low, and does not meet the technical needs of existing mini computer customers.
In terms of Microsoft, Linux is a major threat to the application of the palm-in-style device, making money for the WINDOWS operating system application software. He pointed out: "Because computer operations become internet-centered, their things will use Linux, because it is brand new." He said that the laptop gradually became a home appliance, people outside Tourism uses palm, such as the release of the BlackBerry of Research in Motion.
Linux also provides a choice of cheap, product forms that are different from Windows. Although the functionality of Linux in the past is not as good as UNIX or Windows, this operating system is now rapidly rising because it is simple and cheaper. Chirstensen said that similar growth trends now appear in the database market, such as the increasingly popular mysql.
CRISTENSEN said that in the next 6 or 7 years, Microsoft should be more actively invested in Linux applications because the part will provide better growth opportunities than operating systems or databases.
He suggested Microsoft to acquire Research in Motion to enhance the investment Linux action, rather than continuing to improve Windows in the operation of the palm. He said: "With the improvement of BlackBerry, it will attract more application functions. Those are the field of growth. ... If Microsoft seizes this, they will be safe."
