Economies of scale really are the challenge on the entrepreneurial scene. What can new startups do to gain an edge over large competitors? David Walsh Bronxville knew about this challenge and he was able to capitalize on niche technology sectors which include cloud computing, cybersecurity, and Internet-based communications, as well as data centers.
Evolving Opportunities
These profitable niches are ever-evolving with so much that is unknown. The companies creating the coding technologies are sending out new versions monthly. The fact that there are so many updates means that the opportunities are ever-changing. In one month the code may be stable. The next month it may not be stable.
Changing Code and Stability
Do you remember Windows XP, Windows 97, Windows Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10? Every other operating system version was unstable. Most recently, Windows 8 was unstable. To correct it, Microsoft quickly came out with Windows 10.
The best version of any code is the most recent version. The older generations often don’t understand this. They tend to prefer to maintain what they know. However, as times change, computers have to constantly be updated to remain stable which goes against the grain for many people.
Many companies spend millions, if not billions of dollars to upgrade code every year. They have to upgrade their code at every level. This means that they need to upgrade the operating systems, the database versions, the middleware (example: JBOSS), the services (example: Java), the front end (example: PHP), as well as many other layers and supporting software in between. There are entire companies whose sole purpose is to tell larger companies which operating systems they need to upgrade.
Change Affords Opportunity
Since the code is an ever-changing environment, it becomes a land of endless opportunity. Internet Explorer has just this year announced its retirement. Companies globally will need to spend billions of dollars to get off of Internet Explorer and their dependency on it.
With so many changes, people who see this opportunity can capitalize on it as Bronxville’s David Walsh did. Those changes can be made by managing the server version changes through the cloud companies, or by hiring cybersecurity companies to expose the coding version vulnerabilities.
Managing change is a great opportunity. If everything stayed the same, the economies of scale wouldn’t allow for smaller companies to compete with large corporations. Luckily, that’s not the case. Many companies outsource most of their operations to smaller skilled companies that specialize in one thing. This is beneficial both for the larger outfits and the smaller companies.
Many large companies still have old footprints of code versions from back in the dark ages. They still have to maintain older code which isn’t widely known anymore and they often pay through the nose to hire old employees that had experience with the old code and software. They often need to migrate the old code to a new system. Many large older companies can’t afford to migrate, so they just keep building on top of the older systems. In the end, change is expensive, and change is a big opportunity for anyone who can see it.
