For years I’ve been reading reports of application scalability problems at the top end. In that time, the networks have gotten more robust, hard disks bigger and faster, raid more sophisticated, operating systems handle threading better, and we’re dealing in gigabytes of memory, not kilobytes. If we, the I.T. industry, are not careful, the problem for most will no longer be one of scaling up to handle volume, but instead one of cost and complexity reaching such levels that it is quickly becoming impossible to build smaller, nimble systems with the same tools that the larger more robust applications use.

I recently read some technical data on a new platform being developed that would require a minimum licensing cost of between $200,000 and $400,000 for the licensing. Presumably you’ll still need a massive project to install, define, secure, and integrate the platform. All this money spent is for content management.

Content management is something I have a little experience in. I, along with my partner in the venture, won the 2003 Lotus Beacon Award for a content management solution that’s been in production for a high tech manufacturer for several years. One thing I can tell you for sure, is that for a company to spend something like three quarters of a million dollars (US) to roll out a content management solution, then somewhere like half a million dollars a year for just hardware and software maintenance means they’d better be a really big company – certainly any company under half a billion dollars in annual revenue is under qualified.

Look at what’s happened with other products. Long terms players like DB2 have come out in recent years with increasingly smaller scale versions of their products. Why? Because there are a lot more companies out there than can spend $50,000 than there are that can spend $500,000.

If you’re out there thinking about a market position for your new product – think again if you can’t sell it for $50k or less to SMB.