In the next five years, the economics of computing will cause work to be dispersed to autonomous systems that will combine as needed for cooperation, without having to depend on specific operating systems and microprocessors to function at all. That's simply not affordable. That makes IT an attractive target for cost reduction when an economic slowdown occurs. Now that corporate allocations to IT have been reached, growing needs for investments in energy, transportation and manufacturing must be met. There's no demonstrable relationship between computer spending and corporate profits.
Executives can no longer tolerate that.
Despite all the talk about distributed computing and e-commerce, the reality is that the principal appliances of the computer age are the Wintel machines. Their architecture is an embodiment of centralized thinking. The operating system must be fully informed about every conceivable feature and event. The extremely successful Wintel offerings are the result of valiant efforts to include everyone within their fold through cooperation, backward compatibility, software engineering tools, added features and options that accommodate increased variety. Although commendable, those efforts have led inevitably to a level of complexity that is manageable only at exorbitant costs.