The industry, according to Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a strategy executive at I.B.M., has entered “the post-technology era.” It is not that technology itself no longer matters, he explained. Instead, he said, the steady advances in chips, disk storage and software mean that the focus is no longer on the technology itself – with its arcane language of processing speeds and gigabytes – but on what people and companies can do with it.
As a result, industry executives and analysts say, the balance of power is shifting away from technology suppliers and toward their corporate customers. At the same time, the use of lower-cost building blocks of computer hardware and software is spreading, making it easier for companies and individuals to share data and work together using industry standards rather than remain dependent on one or two main suppliers.