Sustaining vs. Disruptive Innovation:

A sustaining innovation hardly results in the downfall of established companies because it improves the performance of existing products along the dimensions that mainstream customers value.

Disruptive innovation, on the other hand, will often have characteristics that traditional customer segments may not want, at least initially. Such innovations will appear as cheaper, simpler and even with inferior quality if compared to existing products, but some marginal or new segment will value it.

Technologies:

Adobe AIR or Apollo, Amazon Web Services (AWS), GE, RingCube, Salesforce App Exchange, Microsoft, Oracle

 
Adobe AIR - Adobe Integrated Runtime
(old code name: Apollo)

Product Description:

Adobe secured their existing market and also create the new application to disrupt their own technoloogies to capture the future markets.

The future is Apollo.  Why?  Adobe Flash is found in 98% of all PCs in the world.  Apollo is the next generation of Flash bring interactivity out of the browser and into the desktop.  Apollo is a web service, Apollo is a Flash website, Apollo is an architecture unto itself.

SDKs and other learning materials are free to download from Adobe and their development community is vocal so plenty of other developers to work with. 

Yes, Microsoft and others have their own Apollo competitors but none of those competitors include  VoIP into their application like Apollo does.  Apollo is the complete package with 98% market penetration.

Adobe´s Flash Player is widely used on the Web, and it´s Adobe Runtime Environment, or AIR, (formerly known as Apollo) lets Web developers create desktop applications.

 "Our primary focus is building a platform that allows developers to build great Web-based applications,"
Downey said. "AIR is the ideal platform for building these types of Web applications that are robust and powerful."

Adobe, too, is using AIR to build some applications. The Adobe Media Player, which it announced earlier this year, is for watching Internet videos. Even though it is an application, Adobe considers the media player part of the platform it provides to third parties that have the ability to customize it, Downey said.

At the same time, Adobe is encouraging start-ups to write sophisticated Web applications that could be online alternatives to Microsoft Office.

Strategy:
Adobe´s AIR First platform, then applications, executive says.

As Web-based applications become more powerful, Adobe Systems´ focus is to provide a development platform rather than create online Office-style applications, according to an executive in Adobe´s developer group.

"One of the main reasons we did AIR is because Adobe wants that technology to build new applications"

  Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon secure their existing market of online books and other items and expand it by introducing the amazon web services to give the power to their existing products and also capture new customers by producing webOS.

Product Description:
Amazon is not just a book store any more, they are the most powerful web services company in the world.  Yes, more powerful then Google and IBM.  Amazon has built a new eco-system around their Amazon Web Servcies: S3 and EC2.  S3 is a virtual storage network that is cheaper than any other storage provider on the web.  Not only is it cheap, but because its provided by Amazon, you data will be available 24 hours a day.  EC2 is Amazon´s virtual server farm where you can pay $0.15 per hour to rent a server from Amazon.  You do not need to buy a server to do your development, just use Amazon EC2 for about 12 dinar per hour.

Not having money to develop with a server is no longer an excuse.  Amazon EC2 allows you to rent as many servers as you need, its limitless.  Many startups are build ontop of Amazon S3  and EC2 only.  You don´t need an infrastructure or bandwidth to host your new application or service, Amazon will do it for you.  Telekom Serbia prices are no longer relevant,  you and Amazon are. 

Strategy:

At the core of the Amazon strategy are the Web Services. The Amazon team takes the concepts of search, storage, lookup and management the data and turns them into pay-per-fetch and pay-per-space web services. This is a brilliant strategy and Amazon is certainly a visionary company. But what impresses me the most as an engineer is their ability to take very complex problems, solve them and then shrink wrap their solutions with a simple and elegant API.

WebOS market. Google has already made moves with its Google Base API and is rumored to be working on the GDrive. Microsoft also has Live Drive in the works. Both Google and Microsoft are no doubt working on other web services initiatives. Also watch out for smaller but more innovative players, like 3Tera.

Amazon Rolls Out its Visionary WebOS Strategy. WebOS services are going to be utilized by thousands of companies - and will power the next generation of web applications. Amazon is at this point leading the charge of the big Internet companies to capture this potentially huge market.

Holographic Data Storage

Product Description:
With the world´s data storage needs continually expanding, storage capabilities must expand with it. GE scientists are developing new, 3-dimensional technology that will push the limits of storage so that we have lots of room to grow.

Data storage and management fuels many aspects of the world´s economy. The average company´s data storage needs triple every 18 to 24 months and the worldwide data storage capacity has grown from 283,000 terabytes in 2000 to nearly 5 million terabytes by 2005. Couple that with the average person´s data storage growth of 250 megabytes per year and the fact that 75% of all IT spending is for data storage, and you have one enormous data storage challenge.

Now almost everyone has heard of the “format war” that continues to exist between the two next-generation optical storage formats: Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD.

Strategy:

One of those times that we all recalled was in 1989 when folks at IBM wrote the letters “IBM” on a nickel crystal with xenon atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope.  Well, it dawned on me that the holographic storage team here at Global Research did something very similar back in 2005 using micro-holograms in the volume of our holographic material, only this time it was the GE logo!

Holographic Data Storage Research Focus

This multidisciplinary effort leverages expertise at GE Global Research in polymer chemistry, materials science, physics, optics and electrical engineering for the following key focus areas:

New Material Design

Leverage high performance GE plastics and add molecules to enable 3D storage.

3D Storage Systems

Understanding material interaction within the system and developing the optical systems architecture.

Electro Optics

Exploring how optical technologies can improve future GE products.

MojoPac & RingCube

Product Description:

Is an example of where virtualization has gone.  MojoPac allows you to store your entire PC and its contents including OS and files as a complete duplicate on a USB drive.  You don´t need a PC any more, just carry around your USB memory stick and plug-into any available PC in the world and you will have access to your personal PC environment.

MojoPac isn´t a program, it´s a service.  I cite it here as an example of how and what you should be thinking in terms of innovation.  You must be thinking, how can I out innovate these guys.  You can just by knowing that they exist. 

MojoPac for consumers allows gamers, road warriors and other PC users to capture their personal computing desktop and replicate it within a MojoPac image. As a result, gamers can take their games with them, travelers can carry their personal applications, settings and information and transform PCs, even airport kiosks into their personal computing.

RingCube’s MojoPac Enterprise Suite offers an effective way to eliminate most data leakage and theft at the endpoint, providing a powerful way to ensure employees have the access and performance they need in a completely secure environment.

Strategy:
Digital workspace provider RingCube Technologies Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup and one of Gartner Inc.´s 2007 "Cool Vendors in PC Technologies," added to its cool factor this week, launching a business version of its MojoPac.

RingCube CEO Shan Appajodu said the company avoids the term virtualization when describing its products, preferring to call itself a provider of managed digital workspaces. Formed in 2004 and with $16 million in venture capital behind it, RingCube took a page from companies such as WebEx, testing the product first with consumers. "A lot of gamers like our products, using it as a portable PC game cartridge," Appajodu said.

The strategy, capitalizing on the so-called consumerization of IT, gave RingCube valuable feedback for improving the product, he said, and an independent sales force when the company started calling on corporate customers.

Sales force also secure the existing CRM customer’s and give a new way of thinking to other companies as well to make the App Exchange incorporated in their own platform.


Salesforce.com’s App Exchange

Product Description:

 “Think of it as the iTunes of business software. With Salesforce.com’s App Exchange, small businesses can go online and easily download hundreds of software applications developed by independent vendors around the world. It’s a revolutionary model for software distribution.”

There are over 400 applications in the directory so far. Some of the applications require that you pay for them. Some require that you install software on your own server. But many are completely free applications that run entirely in your Salesforce instance. The Pricing section of each application entry will let you know if the application is free or not.

If you see a Get It Now button then you can install the application directly into your Salesforce account. Other applications have Download buttons instead. These are applications that you run on your desktop or server that access your Salesforce account through the API.

Strategy:

Salesforce.com’s ability to fuel momentum for on demand software-as-services solutions as an alternative to conventional packaged software—growing its installed  base to more than 351,000 subscribers.
We conclude by assessing salesforce.com’s capabilities for executing on its AppExchange vision, and with our perspective on what the vendor will need to do to reach the next level.