Computing is old. People have computed since ages. However the first machines to support computing were designed in the 19th century by Charles Babbage. At the end of the 20th century these machines have been built and appeared to work! The Differential Machine and many others (but dead) computing machines Enigma, Altair, Macintosh (of course), VAX can be seen in de computer museum here in Mountain View California.
Our day ended with a debate in the Churchill Club at the premises of the computer museum about enterprise software between Marc Benioff of salesforce.com and Hasso Plattner of SAP. In practice this was a debate between the old software industry model, the closed model with new versions and vendor lock in represented by SAP and the new model Software as a Service with loosely coupled services automatically updated and managed and hosted by an outside provider. Who won? Most of us prefer the new ideas of SaaS but SAP will be present for more years to come was promised.
During the day Microsoft showed us an overview of their research, which they particularly run as a computer sciences department. And they gave us some insight in their “TV from a Telco provider” product.
But we began the day very well with our visit to the Software Development Forum. This non-for profit organization exists for 25 years and organizes events for their member community on various technical subjects. They connect people such as engineers, entrepreneurs, business angels and alike. Many volunteers support them. We all got the feeling that we could envision the ICTkring in the far future as a kind of SD Forum organization in Delft.
On the picture: Susan of the SD Forum
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