A number of commenters have speculated about what Microsoft would create after Vista - with the idea being that the market has moved beyond large, monolithic systems deliveries. Google, and specifically Google Labs, is the new delivery model, and in the next couple of posts I'm going to speculate on how the industry evolved to this point, and what it implies for software delivery going forward.
I was a VP at Oracle at one of the specific points when the industry turned, and there are a lot of interesting things to draw from the evolution, and Larry Ellison's (among others) vision for the future. Larry has (cultivates, maybe) an image as a maverick at least, maybe even a crazy man, but in the evolution of software he's been crazy like a fox, and his vision has been spot-on.
Next up: The Year Zero: 1994-1995.