Liability And Reliability

With software becoming more and more indespensable for mission critical tasks, while in most instances already feature–complete, reliability will be the next frontiere in software evolution.

- The golden age of software is over. Look at all the mergers, it is now about making it work in your organization

- For most software categories, the features are becoming stable. How many features do you use in MS Office 2003, that were not available in 97? Most categories are now at least 10 years old, and we start to understand what features we need

- User become frustrated, because they no longer see what the computer enables them to do, because they now have enjoyed the benefits for so long. Instead, they realize how much maintenance all there crappy software costs them and they look for a better way.

- So demand goes to the next level: Useability and Reliability. The same as has happened with cars: First you needed it so badly, that you were prepared to accept a lot of little annoyances in using it. Then, in the 60's, you wanted an easy to use car, that looked nice. Then, the Japanese came, and redefined expectations of quality.

- At the same time, pure software systems are responsible for billions of sales. Airline tickets, amazon, ebay all need highly reliable business systems

- Since alternative ways of doing business are becoming uneconomic, and so extinct, these can no longer function as backups. Therefore it will become very hard for companies to avoid liability for software faults in the future.

-Tolerance for software errors will go done, as functions have been available for so long that there is an expectation of improved quality over time.