In the past, we used to distinguish between Technology Companies, and Technology Enabled Companies. The difference was pretty clear – the former developed technology products, while the latter used technology to enable the product or service delivery.

In the technology space, mobile companies used to be a distinct type of companies, which usually developed products or services specifically to be used on mobile devices and on-the-go. In the last few years, this has changed. Since Apple created the mobile apps market, and mobile devices with 3G and GPS became widely used, mobile became more than just a distinct technology arena. It is now the enabler of new products, services, and business models. Here are some examples for products and services that are not directly related to mobile, but would not be what they are without it:

1. Pandora – The internet radio service was launched in 2000, with a unique technology to match songs their user’s music taste. Despite of their cool offering, the service never really picked up, but with the release of their iPhone app 2008, they immediately reported an unbelievable boost in the rate of new user registration. The ability to steam music on the go, which was not available in first 8 years of the service, was eventually what enabled its success.
2. Zipcar – I’m one of the many fans of this popular car rental service, which allows you to rent a car by the hour from accessible locations across big cities. Their website works very well as a way to access the service and book cars, but the idea of a mobile application simply upgrades this completely. Regardless of where I am, if I need a car, the app locates the available cars near me and books one for me (and if I can’t find the car I booked, I can honk the horn from the app).
3. Facebook – It can be interesting (or not) to read that my fried “Had a great time at the U2 concert today”, but it’s much more exciting to read “I’m at the U2 concert now!” and see a picture of Bono which was taken 2 seconds ago. That’s “live” social networking.
4. Yelp – I don’t always know where I’m going to eat when I’m going out, especially as a tourist in a place I don’t know. There aren’t many things more intuitive than having your mobile device find you top rated restaurants around you, at a certain price range and that are currently opened. It’s one of the things that just make sense. And if it did not exist, someone would have had to invent it.

The common attribute of the above companies is that even though mobile presence is a key contributor to their success, they are not mobile companies. There are complex and unique processes involved in creating their service, product, or content (which is often user generated). These happen in the non-mobile side, but the mobile platform is the one that delivers a compelling value to the users. It’s the Enabler.

OK. Now that I’ve got your attention, let me elaborate. It matters, just like all foundational decisions matter when deciding what and how you’re going to design and develop a software solution. It just doesn’t matter the way some people think it matters.

I’m writing this because it seems that I’ve had this discussion at least a dozen times in the past few years, and every time I give a call to my team and ask: “what is better, Drupal or .Net?” or something similar. The answer I get is always something on the order of “it depends, but most likely based on the fact that the company wants to do something long-term and add lots of customized features, it doesn’t matter.”

That doesn’t mean that the process will be the same, but rather that the time, effort, work and outcomes are likely going to end up in a similar place. With Open Source, you sprint ahead early, setting up a working framework in almost no time at all, and things are looking great. Then, a curveball feature requirement comes into play and things grind to a halt as the team searches for a plugin that meets the need or, more likely, works to develop custom code that does the job.

In a parallel universe, the .Net team has started out slowly, using their experience and the vanilla framework to get started. It’s all “custom”, but then there’s plenty of help out there in the community and the system is ready for anything. Six months into the project, when those pesky custom features are tackled, they don’t pose nearly the challenge as they do for the Open Source team. Nine months in, and both teams are basically doing the same work, and any cost savings at the beginning has turned into a wash.

So, the lesson here is, when choosing a development environment, make sure to think strategically about the long term, and don’t worry too much about how much “savings” you’ll get from the cost difference of Open Source versus Licensed. In the end, this is only part of the problem, and not the most important part.