Open-source, Web 2.0, SAAS continue to disrupt

Meanwhile, Gartner analysts were also talking about innovation this week, at the Gartner Web Innovations conference in Las Vegas. Their key takeaway: consumerization and open-source will continue to produce disruptions in the high-tech market and will continue to provide new revenue opportunities for businesses. Specifically, analyst Tom Austin said that the relationship between Web 2.0, SAAS, global class, consumerization and open-source is growing more complex. When it comes to vendor management, he said that "the[se] five forces can impact the vendor balance of power, kill distribution and business models and create new ones, and create implementation alternatives."

All of this has a lot to do with competition. Traditional software vendors like Microsoft and IBM are competing with smaller and more nimble vendors in the Web 2.0 space with wikis, AJAX applications, social networks and mashups. "When there [are] tens of hundreds of thousands of vendors out there, it's no longer an issue of who's the leader," Austin said. "The best alternative will change. In the end, patterns emerge and new ways of working emerge."

For more on how new tools are reshaping the enterprise space:
- see the article in eWeek