Developers are becoming the new kingmakers in technology as platforms become more programmable and customizable. Open source software and APIs have made technology building blocks widely available, allowing developers to create new applications and solutions. As a result, developers now have more influence over what technologies are adopted as they have more choice and can experiment quickly with different options. Vendors must focus on creating open and customizable platforms if they want to stay relevant as developers and their preferences now drive technology decisions.

1. Defrag 2012
The Arab Spring of Software:
Developers are the New
Kingmakers
Donnie Berkholz Lauren Cooney
Analyst, Redmonk Sr. Director, Software Strategy, Cisco
dberkholz@redmonk.com lauren.cooney@cisco.com
Twitter: @dberkholz Twitter: @lcooney

2. The First Kingmaker
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick
Photo courtesy Wikia

3. “A „platform‟ is a system that can be
programmed and therefore customized
by outside developers – users - and in
that way, adapted to countless needs
and niches that the platform’s original
developers could not have possibly
contemplated, much less had time to
accommodate…”
Marc Andreessen, 2007

4. Open Source:
The DeFacto Standard

5. Cloud

6. Shadow IT &
The Consumerization of IT
Photo Courtesy NCJ

7. Code Sharing & Reuse

8. Commonalities:
Open Building Blocks
&
Technology Availability
How Developers Became Kingmakers
© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 8

9. Affecting The Vendor Landscape
What IT Decision
Makers THINK is
Being Used
What Developers What is Actually
Want to Use Being Used

10. The Goldfish is Really the Shark

11. “We have a decision-by-experiment
culture. Instead of declaring, „here is the
future functionality we will have in 24
months and 36 months‟ and doggedly
building to that, we are now running
experiments in hours and days. If
something works, we double-down on
it. If it doesn’t, we discard and move
on.”
Brad Smith, CEO, Intuit
2012

12. “How Can I Configure a
Router, A Firewall, A Load
Balancer, Server &
Storage through APIs?””
© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 12

13. So Yes, The World is Flat
Make it Work for You

14. IT’S AN ARAB SPRING
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BUILDING BLOCKS.
WE NEED TO CREATE THEM.
AND THAT’S A MUST FOR OUR
SURVIVAL.

15. A Puzzling Pattern in VC Deals

16. A Brave New World

17. He Who Has the Best DX Wins
ProgrammableWeb, February 2012

18. Funnels: Not Just for Sales

19. It's All About Barriers to Entry

20. The Four Stages
of
Software
Production

21. STAGE 1
“The money is in the
hardware,
not the software”

22. STAGE 2
“Actually, the money is in
the software”

23. STAGE 2.5
“Maybe the money is in
the integration?”

24. STAGE 3
“The money is not in the
software,
but it is differentiating”

25. STAGE 4
“Software is not even
differentiating,
the value is the data”

26. Who is Leading in Data?

27. Who is Leading in Inner-Sourcing?

28. Who is Leading in
Default to Open?

29. Who is Leading in Services?

30. A Glimpse of the Future
 GitHub rules ALM
 Everyone writes to a PaaS
 Open building blocks will win
 Default to open, else inner-sourced
 Developers take over Ops and Data