Insight Community

The traditional enterprise software business is being attacked from two directions, open source technologies and hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings. Do these represent a real threat to the incumbent software providers, and if so, what is the best way to deal with it?

Developing applications for the mobile world is incredibly tricky. Unlike the PC world, where the choices are pretty obvious, the complexity level for mobiles is exponentially more difficult. You basically take carriers multiplied by OEMs/handset vendors multiplied by operating systems multiplied by development platforms to set the base level of complexity. Add to that the rapid churn rate of users, and it becomes even trickier.

So, for a company that's developing mobile applications, and wants to maximize coverage while minimizing integration costs, what is the best strategy? We recognize that it may be different for enterprise apps and consumer apps -- but are interested in both areas, so please give thoughts either on both markets. Feel free to think outside the box, but hopefully the answers are practical. As a secondary question, if the strategy is to attack one platform at a time, what sequence of carriers/platforms/vendors makes the most sense, for each of the consumer and enterprise markets?

What features do you feel are missing from the Techdirt Insight Community and should be added? How can we improve the service?

There's been tremendous consolidation lately in the computer security space, with many of the big firms (Symantec, McAfee) gobbling up the smaller players. Is this trend likely to continue over the next 18 to 24 months? Why or why not? Either way, is this a good thing or a bad thing for the overall IT security industry and why?

We would like to compile the current size (# of providers, customers, revenue), historical growth, and potential growth in the wireless broadband internet market on two scales: 1) municipal wifi and 2) rural fixed wireless -- on a state-by-state breakdown.

This issue is clearly a tall order, so the first 10 acceptable responses to provide data and/or suggestions for obtaining this information will be chosen as winners. A follow-up issue to this project may be posted based on the responses gathered here.