SaaS, CIOs and the Mongolian Steppes

Gianpaolo's blog — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 10:40:00 GMT

The Nov. 15 issue of CIO magazine features Steve Ballmer, Kevin Turner and Andy Lees (Microsoft CEO,

re: SaaS and Biology

Gianpaolo Carraro — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 19:03:20 GMT

> and whilst Office is effectively the Homo sapiens of the world (i.e. it modifies the environment rather than being modified by the environment)

:) I wonder what the "greenhouse effect" is

re: SaaS and Biology

DavidWaldock — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 13:25:38 GMT

It's an interesting point about biological evolution:

"It is very clear in Nature that species evolved based on the conditions of their habitat or more precisely, the one who were more in tune with their habitat survived"

Not only that, but since the environment is constantly in fluctuation the "ideal" solution (or, in the metaphor, animal) can never be achieved: just as the polar bear reaches the peak of fitness for the frozen north, the ice starts melting and they have to adapt again. Just as grass adapts to better survive very dry conditions, a period of heavier rains beginning, causing different plants with different heritable characteristics to survive and their characteristics to become dominant within the species.

The same is also true of the species of SaaS (and other) software: they must continually adapt to be fit enough to survive the technoenvironmental changes. We're currently used to software with a long lead time which hangs around for a few years before being replaced by the generation of the software (Office 2003 -> Office 2007) whereas perhaps we need software which evolves more rapidly to meet the needs of changing environments - and whilst Office is effectively the Homo sapiens of the world (i.e. it modifies the environment rather than being modified by the environment), perhaps we need to see more smaller species which evolve rapidly to survive.

Taking the evolution argument one step further: do different sociopolitical environments have different technological needs or can one size fit all?

David