CIO magazine had an article this month “Why CIOs Still Like Do It Yourself Software Development” and while the article wasn’t terribly compelling I do think it makes what is about to become inevitable, acceptable. We’ve spent the last couple of decades convincing ourselves that application development is hard. Yes there is plenty of evidence, and more than enough projects gone bad that it’s pretty easy to come to that conclusion. And yes, good application software developers are expensive to come by. But, in my opinion, most of the pieces are in place for a renaissance in the business. I think within the next few years we’ll see the equivalent of visicalc for transactional systems, except that it will be robust, scale and be secure. Stay tuned.