Selling picks to the gold miners

“Gold was discovered in California in of 1848. By May of 1848 reports were stating there is more gold in them there hills that all the people in California could take out in fifty years.” A man called Samuel Brannan opened his small store at John Sutter’s Fort, right in the heart of the gold rush. Brannan took a little gold and traveled back to San Francisco. He stepped off the train and proceeded to tell the crowds he encountereds, “Gold! Gold! Gold! By the middle of June, three quarters of the male population had left town for the gold mines near Sutter’s Fort. Samuel Brannan never looked for gold, but selling shovels, picks and supplies to miners made him California’s first millionaire. Did all the miners become rich and find their “pot of gold?” Not a chance. Most of them wasted time and meager resources only to return to their original homes, poor and discouraged.”
A post by Highhopes on the warrior forum.

The Internet revolution has spawned the latest equivalent of the gold rush. There are many people searching for gold in them thar bits and bytes. Not every one of these e-businesses will be successful, but the organisations selling the facilitation tools to the e-miners will prosper from every transaction.

SDN represents a similar model for OSS as it lowers the barrier of entry and costs for individual innovators in the fields of switching, security, OSS, etc. Whoever can invent and sell the tools that support the long tail of innovators in these fields will surely prosper. By comparison, the current OSS market is “owned” by a few big organisations who build their own proprietary tools.