Everyone needs a Plan B
One of the reasons I continue to love the technology industry so much is that it never stands still. For a long-time fan of Charles Handy, it definitely follows his mantra of good companies requiring constant product evolution, even if those products never take off.
Innovate or die is the ideology we have to live by. The recent announcements surrounding Broadcom and VMWare came as no surprise. I’m not claiming I was forecasting it, but it’s in line with what has been happening in the industry throughout my career.
I’m lucky enough to have a first edition of Geoffrey Moore’s seminal Crossing the chasm. I hand the book out to the teams of every company I work with. The later editions no longer have the case studies Geoffrey mentioned back in 1993. Why would they? No one in their 20’s , 30’s and even 40’s has ever heard of Wang or Netscape (they were the Dell/EMC’s and Google Chrome of their day )…but that’s the point it makes very clearly; just because your industry is currently dominated by a behemoth, don’t be intimidated. Everyone has their day. It’s pretty predictable; hot startup company hits a niche or new market, buys another complimentary company, has to maintain growth for the investors, buys more best of breed companies…suddenly managing the integration between 50+ companies is a huge effort and innovation dies. Complexity overtakes everything.
Innovate or die. It’s the ideology we live by in our industry.
So it’s not a bad thing to have a plan B, because that plan B may become your plan A. VergeIO is a great plan B for VMWare customers not satisfied with their Plan A’s new entrant, Broadcom.
