Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries : 9780262050852

Winner of the Business, Management & Accounting category in the 2006 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc.

Software platforms are the invisible engines that have created, touched, or transformed nearly every major industry for the past quarter century. They power everything from mobile phones and automobile navigation systems to search engines and web portals. They have been the source of enormous value to consumers and helped some entrepreneurs build great fortunes. And they are likely to drive change that will dwarf the business and technology revolution we have seen to this point. Invisible Engines examines the business dynamics and strategies used by firms that recognize the transformative power unleashed by this new revolution--a revolution that will change both new and old industries.

The authors argue that in order to understand the successes of software platforms, we must first understand their role as a technological meeting ground where application developers and end users converge. Apple, Microsoft, and Google, for example, charge developers little or nothing for using their platforms and make most of their money from end users; Sony PlayStation and other game consoles, by contrast, subsidize users and make more money from developers, who pay royalties for access to the code they need to write games. More applications attract more users, and more users attract more applications. And more applications and more users lead to more profits.

Invisible Engines explores this story through the lens of the companies that have mastered this platform-balancing act. It offers detailed studies of the personal computer, video game console, personal digital assistant, smart mobile phone, and digital media software platform industries, focusing on the business decisions made by industry players to drive profits and stay a step ahead of the competition. Shorter discussions of Internet-based software platforms provide an important glimpse into a future in which the way we buy, pay, watch, listen, learn, and communicate will change forever. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

About the Author

David S. Evans is Managing Director of the Global Competition Policy Practice at LECG LLC. Andrei Hagiu is Assistant Professor of Strategy at Harvard Business School. Richard Schmalensee is John C. Head III Dean and Professor of Management and Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. Evans, Hagiu, and Schmalensee are also with Market Platform Dynamics, a management consulting firm that focuses on strategic analysis and product design for platform-based firms. Richard L. Schmalensee is John C. Head III Dean and Professor of Management and Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is co-editor of Management: Inventing and Delivering Its Future (MIT Press, 2003).

Implementation and Applications of DSL Technology : 9780849334238

This book offers deep industrial insight into the development of DSL technologies and their related applications in the telecommunications industry. It compiles the expertise of industry specialists from various perspectives, including chip designers, information theorists, systems engineers, service providers and more. It addresses in a rigorous manner specific issues that have been fundamental in the success of DSL technology, including insights into the theory that sustains DSL development, constraints, and challenges. It also offers a vast array of information not currently in the public domain, including the results of many years of practical experience that has never before been put to paper.

IC Interconnect Analysis : 9781402070754

As integrated circuit (IC) feature sizes scaled below a quarter of a micron, thereby defining the deep submicron (DSM) era, there began a gradual shift in the impact on performance due to the metal interconnections among the active circuit components. Once viewed as merely parasitics in terms of their relevance to the overall circuit behavior, the interconnect can now have a dominant impact on the IC area and performance. Beginning in the late 1980's there was significant research toward better modeling and characterization of the resistance, capacitance and ultimately the inductance of on-chip interconnect.

IC Interconnect Analysis covers the state-of-the-art methods for modeling and analyzing IC interconnect based on the past fifteen years of research. This is done at a level suitable for most practitioners who work in the semiconductor and electronic design automation fields, but also includes significant depth for the research professionals who will ultimately extend this work into other areas and applications.

IC Interconnect Analysis begins with an in-depth coverage of delay metrics, including the ubiquitous Elmore delay and its many variations. This is followed by an outline of moment matching methods, calculating moments efficiently, and Krylov subspace methods for model order reduction. The final two chapters describe how to interface these reduced-order
models to circuit simulators and gate-level timing analyzers respectively.

IC Interconnect Analysis is written for CAD tool developers, IC designers and graduate students.

IBM On Demand Technology Made Simple, Third Edition : 9780977356911

The Fastest Way to Learn about IBM Strategy and Technology Since October 2002, IBM has been laser focused on a sweeping strategy known as "On Demand Business." Since then, every IBM product line and service offering has been steadily infused with the technology and function necessary to support the On Demand Business model. In this freshly updated "Third Edition" of "IBM On Demand Technology Made Simple," popular technology author Jim Hoskins starts by describing the IBM vision known as On Demand Business so you can see the big picture and understand how your business can benefit. We then move in for a closer look at the computing infrastructure necessary to support an On Demand Business. You will come away with a new understanding of how you can evolve your current computing infrastructure to achieve the flexibility so vital in the on demand era.

This MaxFactsTM Guidebook presents an easy-to-read overview of key building block products such as IBM servers, storage, printer, and software including WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, Lotus, Rational and Linux from an On Demand Business perspective. You will learn about the IBM Systems Agenda which guides the development of all IBM server and storage product lines. You will see how virtualization can be leveraged to improve utilization and reduce costs. You will see how to evolve your infrastructure towards the goal of end-to-end integration by leveraging hardware and software that adheres to open standards. To help you stay current, this book provides you with a personal password for accessing the companion Web site which offers up-to-the-minute On Demand Business news, "More on the Web" links highlighted throughout the book, and additional resources. This book will help you:

* Get inside IBM's companywide On Demand Business strategy

* See how best to evolve your infrastructure for the future

* Update your knowledge on key IBM server, storage, printer, and software product lines

* Understand where IBM is headed with Linux

* Stay current through the "members only" companion Web site