How Architecture wins Technology Wars

By: Charles R. Morris and Charles H. Ferguson

Signs of revolutionary transformation in the global computer industry are everywhere. A roll call of the major industry players reads like a waiting list in the emergency room.

The usual explanations for the industry's turmoil are the best inadequate. Scale, friendly government policies, manufacturing capabilities, a strong position in desktop markets, excellent software, top design skills--- none of these is sufficient, either by itself or in combination, to ensure competitive success in information technology.

A new paradigm is required to explain patterns of success and failure. Simply stated, success flows to the company that manages to establish proprietary architectural control over a broad, fast-moving, competitive space.

Architectural strategies have become crucial to information technology because of the astonishing rate of improvement in microprocessors and other semiconductor components. Since no single vendor can keep pace with outpouring of cheap, powerful, mass-produced components, customers insist in stitching together their own local systems solutions. Architectures impose order on the system and make the interconnections possible. The architectural controller is the company that controls the standard by which the entire information package is assembled. Microsoft's Windows is an excellent example of this. Because of the popularity of Windows, companies like Lotus has conformed their software to its parameters in order to compete for market share.

In the 1990's, proprietary architecture control is not only possible but indispensable to competitive success. What's more, it has broader implications for organizational structure: architectural competition is giving rise to a new form of business organization.