Computing and communications hardware is back in vogue once again, thanks to the Internet of Things. End point devices are proliferating daily and are being interconnected as fast as they are being introduced. But as we all know, the hardware can only be as productive as the software that empowers it. Over time, as IDC states in the article, both hardware and software spend will eclipsed significantly by spending on IoT services.
For years – no, make that decades – the technology industry has been running away from hardware as fast as it could, looking to software as the ultimate high-margin business model. IBM almost sank in the early 1990s under the weight of its hardware inventory (especially mainframes), while Microsoft made a colossal fortune with its software-only business approach. Microsoft’s strategy at the time was to let others deal with the low, hard-earned margins of hardware production and maintenance.
