The answer to everything

The consolidation of the software industry has yet to run its course but it will inevitably cause redundancies. Investors are likely to be discouraged from investing in the sector by the recent Department of Justice investigation into Microsoft. Software reviewers are still confused by the odd packages they have to cope with. And genetic mutations caused by iodine in the water supply look set to produce a bizarre idiot-savant fish-man somewhere near Towcester who will provoke civil strife after the millennium.

The answer to all these problems is simple. Instead of trying to produce smaller, Java-based mini-apps, we should embrace the industry's oft-repeated dedication to partnership and produce one enormous software package that will do everything. I'm not sure what it might do to offset the danger of fishman, although if it increases the benign influence of the giant Newkesbury Grudge with his one monstrous eye (he's currently working as a Visual Basic developer), that's another problem solved.

The advantages would be considerable. For once, we really would all be behind one software standard, rather than pretending to be behind it while undermining it from the inside. The software business would be freed from its responsibility to outsell Microsoft, because Microsoft would be one part of the clanking leviathan producing the product. And the responsibility for training your staff to support your software will disappear - you simply poach the people who supported the comparable package at your former rival. Naming software becomes easier too. We could simply call it Software.

Or, more likely, SofTware.

And there will be many benefits for the hardware industry. First, a piece of software that does everything for everyone will be unfeasibly large and awkward. The solution to this is well known - sell larger hard disks, faster processors and more memory.

Second, the hardware industry can finally declare independence from the irritating software people who make their designs look bad. If the package doesn't work, the hardware industry can simply shrug and blame the one massive software company that produced it.

And the channel will inevitably benefit too, not least because with only one software package to choose from, the sales cycle will be shortened.

Public sector contracts could take a mere 18 months.

How will this software perform? Don't bother asking. The culture of secrecy that shrouds software releases will disperse because it's in everyone's interest to know. I can reveal that SofTware 1.0 will have an intuitive interface so it works in exactly the same way as humans. This is long overdue.

So the package will be unpredictable, unreliable, take unexplained days off when there's hard work to be done and get embarrassingly drunk at the Christmas party and insult the boss. Which, of course, means it has to run under Windows.

Tim Phillips is a freelance IT journalist.