What was it he said? Ah, yes... “Those who refuse to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.” Let's look at some history. IBM created a PC with a proprietary architecture. Others created an IBM-compatible PC that was an open platform. Which one is around today? Apple created a brilliant PC device with a closed architecture and a proprietary operating system. Microsoft created an open OS platform and actively recruited developers. Which one owns the market today?

It has been clear for years (going back to the heyday of IBM) that an open platform and the courting of third-party developers wins the market. In the end, the third parties taken together have more money, get to market quicker and have more ideas than any one company could possibly have, regardless of how rich they happen to be.

Network Appliance and EMC are battling tooth and nail to dominate the storage market. Why then do they both have closed platforms and shun third-party developers? (The one exception being the Centera folks, who seem to have the right perspective.) It certainly seems to me that neither EMC nor NetApp live in a world where Santayana's Rule fails to apply. My bet is that the first of these guys who figures out that if their hardware and infrastructure underly every third-party storage application, and they actually support ISVs, they will rule the Industry. What are they waiting for... someone else to create an open platform and take the market away from them? NIH (not invented here) never wins. It has been tested for years with the same result every time.

The level at which a technology is a commodity moves up the ISO model over time.

There was a day when a wireless phone was novel, expensive and difficult to make work. Now we take them for granted. The ISO and its interpretations provide the framework for a connected, digital universe. There was a day when getting a 3Com network adapter to exchange packets with a Novell adapter was a challenge. Now everyone takes this level of connectivity for granted. Later there was a time when getting a Mac, a PC, and a Unix box to talk was a challenge. Now this too is commodity technology.

There is a continous trend here. Namely the action and the interesting problems move up the ISO model over time. Below this line, everything is a commodity and can be assumed to work. Above the line, most things have no clear defacto standards and are likely not to interoperate well.

Once you understand where this line is, you can figure out other things like the relative economics of playing in one space or another.

Most of us have heard of Moore's Law, Murphy's Law, and other Natural Laws that apply to technology and sometimes life itself. Backa's Laws add other observable laws of nature to this collection.