How Architecture Wins Technology Wars

A new paradigm is required to explain patterns of competitive success and failure in information technology. Success flows to the company that establishes proprietary architectural control over a broad, fast-moving, competitive space. Architectural strategies have gained importance in information technology because of the astonishing rate of improvement in microprocessors and other semiconductor components. Since no single vendor can keep pace with the outpouring of cheap, powerful, mass-produced components, customers insist on 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.