“A good deal of the evolution of IT depends upon platforms. The
simple economic facts are that software builders choose not to pay
the cost of porting to more than one or two platforms. This
constricts the number of platforms that can exist in any given
market. Platforms used to be defined by the hardware (Solaris,
HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, OS 390, OS/400, etc.). This has changed. We
are now moving into a two-tier world of platforms… The lower tier
consists of commodity platforms that are portable across different
hardware. Linux and Windows are the only two that currently qualify
as major players here although other platforms could conceivably
emerge from the mobile device market or even the gaming world.