Applistructure: hard to say, but of general interest.(In perspective)

Manufacturing Business Technology, March, 2005 by Keller, Erik

In many ways, the enterprise applications market has been pretty dull for the past five years. Let's face it: following the emergence of the Web in the mid-1990s and the unconsummated horror of Y2K, what else of note has happened? But wait, technology and market mavens will soon have something fairly interesting to kick around.

It's called applistructure. Applistructure represents the merger of enterprise applications and infrastructure technology. It's a strategy being pursued by the largest IT vendors, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. Each of these players--and a few other dark horses--is putting together a product suite that could increase its leverage as a technology seller, and increase its wallet share with individual customers. ...