The first developers of IBM PC computers neglected audio capabilities (first IBM model, 1981). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most recently I was invited to talk to various CIO´s in the German context. The focus of my presentation was about the next years and what to expect from society, how IT changes everything, how to prepare and what to educate the employees on. IDC talked about the concept of the 3^rd Platform. Thinking about the BigData hype while preparing the day, I was reminded on my times with MS-Dos. There was not only one approach to the “PC-Aera”. There was DR-Dos, Apple, still Mainframes etc.

One of the reasons MS-Dos gets more attention was the affinity to IBM and the combination of a device with a market place at this time. Also IBM let others open the space to develop software, add-ons for the PC etc. This generated momentum.

Seeing back the development to Windows 7, has taken a close combination of physics, like Intel, Software, like Microsoft and a change in the market.

The same we currently experimenting with cloud, virtualization and the future stage of an Software defined Datacenter, I guess we have long passed the MS-Dos phase.

So what is the MS-Dos phase?

Plenty of players, not a defined market, overselling of functionality, misleading abbreviations and very poor educated experts, best are from the vendors itself.

With all my talks to the CEO´s, CTO´s of industries, it has the same questions open:

• What can I do with this technology?
• Who can help me to build out the business context? and
• Is this already time to invest into?

There is a clear answer, it depends !

It depends on the maturity of the IT department:

• are they still maintaining the IT or do they drive innovative, business related IT processes.
• Where is the infrastructure? Is the IT department still deploying Storage, Network and Servers, or they running a converged infrastructure with a services layer?
• Do IT departments still focus on education on infrastructure or they hiring Data Scientists ?

MD Tag: MS DOS (Photo credit: shawnblog)

If you can answer this for your IT department, you are much closer to leave the MS-Dos phase behind you.

In the past, many business models have been established and run for years. This will be no longer true in many traditional businesses. Also this business is often in MS-Dos phase, but it will adapt thru the new market drivers, consumeration, urbanization, mobility, Maschine-to-Maschine decision processes and new adaptive computation processes which adjust the business to the demands of the users faster than realtime.

New concepts are unpredictable, like crowd sourcing, open source, raspberry pi physics, and machine learning. There is only one big truth, from MS-Dos to OS X it will take not 20 years, to will happen tomorrow.

Related articles

• Accidental Empires, Chapter 15 – Future Computing
• I.B.M.’s Rometty on the Data Challenge to the Culture of Management
• Accidental Empires, Part 14 — Software Envy (Chapter 8)