re: SaaS, CIOs and the Mongolian Steppes

DavidWaldock — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 12:12:30 GMT

Evolution arises as the result of minor mutations. Some mutations are beneficial for that particular environment at that particular time (for example, grass which is short in very dry conditions) and some which cause real problems for those environmental conditions (for example, grass which is long doesn't thrive in dry conditions). (Of course, when the previously arid environment suddenly starts experiencing lots of rain over a number of years, natural selection causes the long grass to become dominant and the short grass to be rare. Then the environment switches again and it all goes in the opposite direction...)

As many mutations collect in a particular type of creature or plant (which may happen as a result of geographical separation or as a result of a multitude of environmental niches to exploit being available), they speciate and become unable to reproduce with the creatures/plant they evolved from. Often this happens very very quickly as a result of natural pressures (for example, post apocalypse [e.g. the dinosaur extinction event] one tends to see rapid speciation as a result of a wide number of environmental niches being opened up for exploitation due to the previous incumbents [e.g. dinosaurs] no longer being there).

So, in short, mutations and rapid evolution are the same thing - many mutations don't benefit people and the holders of those characteristics die out, but the beneficial changes live on and mould the inheritors of the genetic code of the species.

Of course, all of this can be related to software, including the environmental changes down to business regulation and minor changes to software (new features) and speciation (software undergoes a quantum leap and is no longer backwardly compatible or a new software tool is developed which changes future developments irrevocably).

David (I'm a bit of a biologist, if that's any help ;-))

Practical Limits for Configurability

Fred Chong's WebBlog — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 05:45:22 GMT

The last few months, my team has been working on a sample SaaS application to demonstrate the multi-tenancy